Hawaiian music is often part of our celebration during mahina olelo Hawaii (Hawaiian-language month) in February, when we operate commemorative flights to share Hawaii's native language with our guests.
Each February, in honor of mahina olelo Hawaii (Hawaiian-language month), a team of Hawaiian Airlines employees share Hawaii's native language with our guests on special flights. In what has become an annual tradition, our airport agents and flight crew surprise our guests with gate, boarding and cabin announcements in both English and olelo Hawaii. Earlier this year, on our Hawaiian-language roundtrip flight between Honolulu and Boston, our crew also handed guests translation cards with useful phrases such as "I _____ nau ke oluolu" (May I please have _____) and educational coloring sheets for keiki (children). During their layover, our employees visited the Peabody Essex Museum to pay homage to the Hawaiian god Ku, represented by a six-foot-plus wooden statue acquired by the museum in the mid-nineteenth century.
The olelo Hawaii flights—which have flown to many destinations across our network, from our interisland routes to Tokyo, Portland and Las Vegas—are among many ways we seek to perpetuate a language that was banned from Hawaii classrooms in the late 1800s but has flourished under a revitalization movement that began in the 1970s. A key figure behind the decades-long community effort to lift the language is Dr. Larry Kimura, a University of Hawaii-Hilo professor with whom we partnered in 2019 to establish our olelo Hawaii certification program. We recognize qualified speakers with the Hae Hawaii (Hawaii state flag) imprinted on their name tags, joining other colleagues who are fluent in a variety of languages including Japanese, French, Korean and Samoan.
"When I started college, I was fortunate to receive the advice from a counselor that learning Hawaiian might be fun. I didn't know it then, but I would come to fall in love with the language and get my master's degree in olelo Hawaii," said Manako Tanaka, a member of our Community and Cultural Relations team who now teaches olelo Hawaii classes to fellow employees. "I am grateful to the kumu [teachers] who invested time in teaching me to know and love the language, and I try to bring that passion when engaging with employees about it. Hopefully, it becomes infectious and inspires them to continue on as well."
Today, we honor Hawaiian culture in large and small aspects of our operations, including giving each aircraft in our fleet a Hawaiian name for native birds (on our Boeing 717s), stars or constellations used by Polynesian voyagers in celestial navigation (on our Airbus A330s and Boeing 787s) and native and culturally significant plants (on our Airbus A321neos). You can read Hawaiian on our seat numbers and other signage, hear it on our boarding music and safety video, and find it on our social media channels. Whenever we welcome a new aircraft, open an office or launch a route, we celebrate it with a traditional Hawaiian blessing.
Our support for the language also extends to our communities. Last year, we partnered with Awaiaulu to donate hundreds of copies of the book Ke Kumu Aupuni: The Foundation of Hawaiian Nationhood to thirty-four Hawaiian-language immersion schools, in addition to distributing it to our airport stations, hangar and office spaces. We also gifted $10,000 to Punana Leo o Lahaina, another immersion school, to help it rebuild facilities destroyed by the tragic West Maui wildfires.
As Hawaii's airline, it is gratifying to leverage our business to normalize olelo Hawaii in the workplace. The passion our teammates have for this beautiful language is inspiring, and it gives me hope that it will continue to thrive for generations to come.
From our ohana to yours,
Peter Ingram, Chief Executive Officer, Hawaiian Airlines
