Air Australia has announced its first airline partner as Hawaiian inter-island carrier Go Mokulele.
The new joint marketing agreement will give Air Australia’s customers access to outer islands Big Island, Maui, Kaua’i, Moloka’i and Lana’i.
Chief executive and founder Michael James said the airline would work closely with the domestic carrier and with the Hawaii Tourism Authority to drive sales to the destination.

Improving connection times with Go would follow “slowly”, he added.
Meanwhile, last week also saw the airline launch a domestic service between Melbourne and Brisbane, with James claiming strong sales in the face of stiff competition.

"We were expecting three to four months of loss on the Melbourne to Brisbane route, but on the current load factors, we’re almost breaking even," he said.
But he stressed that it was primarily a “feeder service” for its international routes.

“We expect 20-30% of load on the route to be made up of customers for our international services,” he said. “We would have preferred to partner with a domestic carrier, but we’re not even close to a partnership in the Australian domestic market.”

The new service did not signal the start of a domestic network, he insisted, saying such expansion was “just not on our agenda.”

By Anne Majumdar