Polynesian Airlines Network, c.2001

A rainbow-colored route map for Polynesian Airlines from about ten years ago, via the wonderfully strange, half-dormant website, World of Islands. Its not explicitly clear what the dotted lines refer to, but perhaps Air Pacific or other carriers operated these intra-Antipode routes on Polynesian's behalf.

At the time, Polynesian, founded in 1959 and one of the dominant South Pacific carriers, ran a very prestigious Apia-Honolulu-Los Angeles service, which reportedly bankrupted the company. Sadly, today the airline is relegated to domestic service as Virgin Samoa (formerly Polynesian Blue) runs long-haul flights to Australia and New Zealand. The only service northwards is to Honolulu on Air Pacific, the Fijian carrier.

Scheduled Passenger Routes from Hawaii, 1971: East of the Dateline

A fun artifact from the State Department of Transportation (of Hawaii, presumably) studying the transocean air links of the archipelago. Most flights are indeed from Honolulu. This first post tags the eastbound services to the US West Coast and Vancouver, to Alaska due north, and across to Mexico, as well as inter-Polynesian flights to Tahiti and Samoa. The flights to Acapulco in particular are interesting, as no long-haul flights exist from this fading resort town today.

The only drawback of this representation is it leads the reader to guess which of the airlines listed in box at upper left serve which routes. Some are easy to discern. Several others, such as Western Airlines, TWA, and UTA, no longer fly anywhere.

The next post will detail the westbound flights to Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia, and Asia.

Hawaiian Airlines Routes, 1990

Just three years after the last post, this next, much more muted feature from fabulous Departed Flights shows Hawaiian Airlines having dropped Anchorage and Portland, but otherwise expanded dramatically across the Pacific, reaching Australia and New Zealand while also adding a Polynesian fan of Tahiti and the Cook Islands, along with Guam in Micronesia. Sadly today, most of these exotic island destinations are gone, with the airline only resuming Sydney service and only next year returning to Auckland, and still serving Pago Pago and Papeete. 

Hawaiian Airlines Route Map, 1987

Yet another delight from Departed Flights, this wonderfully-vintage Hawaiian Airlines route map from 1987, showing the small airline bridging the Pacific from Anchorage to Apia, and interesting mix of ferrying West Coast vacationers to the islands, interlinking the archipelago state, and linking the tiny isles of Polynesia with Honolulu, the central Pacific metropolis. Note that most of the Hawaiian destinations are labeled by the islands, not the airports.