LIHU‘E — “Get your bags, sir?” That little question will be heard a lot more at Lihu‘e Airport now that there are five-times as many porters working the curb. The number of porters jumped from about three to 16 earlier
LIHU‘E — “Get your bags, sir?”
That little question will be heard a lot more at Lihu‘e Airport now that there are five-times as many porters working the curb.
The number of porters jumped from about three to 16 earlier this year when Big Island-based management company Hawaii Porter Service was called in to “open-up” and organize Lihu‘e’s operations.
“The old porters weren’t letting anyone else in,” said Dave Peters, a spokesperson with HPS.
That closed system resulted in service so poor that, according to Tim Skinner, acting manager of Lihu‘e Airport, Aloha, Hawaiian, American and United airlines collectively requested a change in management.
“Airlines were dissatisfied with customer-service questions about their porter service,” Skinner said.
Data from those customer-service questionnaires is not available to the public, but they revealed enough of a problem to force a change, Skinner said.
“Nobody even knew there were porters there,” Peters said.
The new porters, like the former ones, are “independent” contractors carrying their own general excise tax licenses and working for tips.
Terms of the contract between HPS and the airlines were not disclosed, but the porters work on 30-day, revocable contracts renewed monthly between the airlines and HPS, Peters said.
The new porters have been organized into an association with written codes of conduct, similar to those of porters at other Hawai‘i airports, he said.
Still, 16 porters working eight-person shifts at both ends of the Lihu‘e terminal might not be enough for what Peters predicts will be a busy summer season.
Management change has been a long time in coming, Peters said.
“The old management operated Lihu‘e for 17 or 18 years,” he said. “The airlines were looking for a change.”
Airline check-in procedures after 9-11 forced many porters, or “skycaps,” as they were called, out of work here. The ones that stayed made it tough for new porters to enter the business, Peters said.
Today, sporting fresh orange aloha shirts and a smile, the new porters — often the first dose of Garden Island aloha a tourist gets — are easy to spot.
“We’ve been satisfied with their performance,” said one official with Aloha Airlines.
“They’re more professional looking,” Skinner said. “You can certainly tell they’re porters.”
Porters can once again offer curb-side check in, said Raj Chatterjee, one of the new porters.
“We hope it’ll be a great summer season,” he said.
HPS manages Hilo Airport porter services, and plans to take over operations in Kona, Peters said.
Business Editor Phil Hayworth may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) or phayworth@pulitzer.net.
