Alternate airport for Hawaii
 

If a flight from the mainland to Hawaii is unable to land anywhere in Hawaii because of extremely bad weather (or some other problem) where does it land? Do aicraft carry enough fuel to get back to the mainland if necessary?

"In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device."

**sorry you can't see the hand signals I'm making**

The flight wouldn't take off if there was a question that it couldn't land.

Air traffic knows way far in advance what is going on.

Even if the plane takes off from the mainland US, they could catch something far enough in advance to bring the plane back.

You have to remember, those big jets can land in some pretty bad weather.

The flight crew also wants to land safely.

There are several large commercial airports on the islands, the chance that all of them would be unavailable because of bad weather (or whatever) is next to nil. And as another post pointed out, the weather has to be really, REALLY bad for it to be a problem.

The Kona airport (Hawai`i island) and Maui's Kahului airport can both accommodate landings by the large jets, if a diversion from Honolulu is required.

Does anyone know if jumbo jets could make the returm trip to the mainland without landing if necessary?

Rusty.......Fully encapsulated,the 747/Jumbo Jet if that is what you are referring to, has a range of appx 8,300 statute miles.Assuming you are flying from the west coast, the jet could fly to any of the airports in Hawaii and not exceed more than appx 2,700 miles one way.You're safe.

Midway had been a designated emergency landing alternative, but its proposed closure has been an on-again, off-again thing in recent months. Not sure what the status of Midway is at this time, but just a few weeks ago a flight from japan made an emergency landing on the atoll and it sparked new debate into keeping the airstrip on Midway open. Wake island was another alterntive, but AFAIK, that too has been closed.

Out of curiousity, why is this an issue?