How Does a Regional Jet Get to Hawaii?
May 25th, 2006 | By Jared BlankWith the news that Mesa’s new airline called Go! will be flying regional jets between Hawaiian islands, I was kinda wondering how you get a regional jet to Hawaii since it’s too far to fly nonstop from the mainland under normal circumstances. If you were wondering the same thing (and I’m sure you weren’t), here’s the answer (thanks to the folks at Airliners.net): you take out all the seats and you fill the cabin with fuel tanks. You can see what that looks like here and here.
Well, I’m enough of an airline geek to have wondered about that in the past. That’s when I learned about “fuel bladders,” which obviously seem like a low-tech, common sense solution. Given the isolation of the Hawaiian Islands, I was kind of expecting one of the local papers to do a “how do they get the planes here” story, but I guess their editors aren’t as airline geeky as us. :