"ALOHA, A Hui Hou, Until we meet again, Mahalo for flying, ALOHA AIRLINES"

Aloha 737
Originally uploaded by CruisAir

If you are interested in aviation, you undoubtedly will have noticed the "death" of several airlines in America just recently. Normally nothing worth mentioning here you would think. This time, it's a little different though. One of those airlines that shut down was Aloha Airlines, an airline that has it's homebase in the wonderful islands of Hawaii in the Pacific and used to offer inter-island flights as well as flights to the US mainland. Aloha was also the airline that became famous for its "cabrio" flight, the accident that happened above Hawaii on an inter-island where a complete section of the cabin was suddenly torn off but the pilots still managed to land the aircraft safely and of the 95 passengers and crew all but one flight crew survived the accident. The reason why I tell you all about this airline is that I read a trip report by an airline enthousiast who was on board Aloha's last commercial passenger flight. My beloved boyfriend Jelle had sent me the link to it. Believe or not, the report touched me. Aloha's shut down for an airline fan like me (who especially loves Aloha, Hawaiian and PSA - don't ask, I don't know why myself...) is comparable to a music fan who must accept the break up of his favorite group, the career stop of his favorite singer or something like this. I shed a little tear, because it simply made me sad to think about all the lovely people that had worked for this airline for sometimes many years with a lot of passion and devotion and who now lost their jobs. I highly recommend to read the article, it's a wonderful story about the kindness of this young man, his love of the airline, the wonderful spirit that brings total strangers together and unites them for a single beautiful moment.
Sure, it's only an airline. Another business down the drain. Bad management. Could all be, but still, in these stories you see the face behind such sad news, you feel the emotions, you get beyond the dry business news. That's what touched me. And it reminded me of my own personal "last flight", actually two. In 1987 the US carrier Western Airlines was taken over by Delta Air Lines. I was on the (one of the) last Western flight, from Salt Lake City to Boston. We left as Western and arrived as Delta, a very rare idea (at least if you are into aviation...). After landing in Boston it became equally emotional as in the Aloha case, I still remember that after all these years.
The second "last flight" I remember was in 2001 when I dispatched the last Eurowings BAe 146 flight, a flight from Amsterdam to Stuttgart, under the EW/KL codeshare agreement and handled by own Eurowings personnel at Amsterdam. After that, many more EW Bae's have seen Amsterdam again, but never again as a EW flight and never again handled by EW personnel, sadly. That last flight was something special, to me as well as to the crew. Back then Amsterdam was EW's biggest hub and with so many daily flights after a while you would get to know your colleagues on board as you would see them quite regularly. So after the last flight, we all knew we would not see each other again. It was strange to kind of loose your colleagues.
Having told all these personal stories it might be more understandable why the Aloha story touched me.
Finally, I am glad I took the chance in October 2007 and together with Jelle flew all three true Hawaiian carriers one more time, Hawaiian Airlines, Island Air and Aloha Airlines.

Aloha and Mahalo to the good people at AQ.