HARMONY AIRWAYS

'Harmony Airways' (Traditional Chinese: 國龍航空公司) was an airline based in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, a suburb of Vancouver. It operated holiday flights from Canada to Mexico, Las Vegas, Nevada and Manchester. Its main base was Vancouver International Airport.^[1]
On March 27, 2007, Harmony Airways announced that it had issued layoff notices to all staff, and that it was ending scheduled flight service on April 9, 2007. The airline will examine other opportunities. Therefore it will not seek protection from creditors and might try to reorganize itself into a charter airline.

Contents

History

Destinations

Services

harmonyone

Harmony Vacations

Fleet

Previously operated

Partner airlines

External links

References

History

The airline started operations in 2002 and was originally named HMY Airways, before being renamed Harmony Airways in May 2004 . It was wholly owned by David Ho.
Even though the Canadian aviation market is very tough on new startups, a few early mistakes led to Harmony Airways quick demise. The choice of late 1980s all Boeing 757 fleet did not help with rising fuel costs. With planes seating 171 passengers, the Boeing 757-200 compared poorly to Westjet's 166 passenger Boeing 737-800. The 737 had significant cost advantages such as landing fees, fuel consumption, and other operating costs^[2]. The company was also impatient with its scheduling. They canceled new routes after only a short time and did not let the routes mature with the customer base. The Vancouver to New York route is very profitable for Cathay Pacific. They use a Boeing 747-400 on this route daily. Harmony Airways, thinking this would be a great route for them to compete in, invested significant dollars setting this route up with an enormous advertising campaign. Cathay Pacific lowered their fares and the route became unprofitable for Harmony Airways. The same scenario unfolded on their Oakland route. After significant money spent on advertising they failed to compete with Alaska Airlines and United Airlines. They then re-focused their attention on Hawaii and vacation destinations. With Westjet placing two Boeing 737-800 on the same route, Harmony again could not compete. Except for their Toronto route, no destination was maintained for more than 7 months^[3].
Having only four aircraft at its disposal, the company had very high operating costs. They could have easily doubled their fleet to eight and except for flight crew, added very little to the corporate side. They either had to grow very fast or be unable to compete with airlines that could afford lowering fares on the few routes Harmony competed. In the end, the decision was made to end scheduled service.

Destinations

Harmony Airways served the following destinations:

★ Palm Springs, California

★ Honolulu, Hawaii

★ Maui, Hawaii

★ Toronto, Ontario

★ Calgary, Alberta

★ Honolulu, Hawaii

★ Oakland, California

★ New York, New York

★ Vancouver, British Columbia

★ Victoria, British Columbia

★ Kelowna, British Columbia

★ Edmonton, Alberta

★ All destinations ended April 9, 2007.

Services

Economy service on Harmony Airways featured a 32" seat pitch, meal and beverage service (including a glass of BC wine), in-flight movies and music (including free headphones) and free advance seat selection. Harmony offered advance seat selection, a full meal service, complimentary beverages, and in-flight entertainment and vacation packages (through its tour operator, Harmony Vacations).

harmonyone

'harmonyone' was the business class service offered by Harmony Airways. Passengers received express check-in, boarding priority, three- or four-course meals prepared by a chef that were served on china, wider seats than economy (with a 52" seat pitch), an amenity kit, Harmony Airway's "Interlude" hand-held entertainment system, and laptop plug-ins.

Harmony Vacations

'Harmony Vacations' (formerly Companion Holidays) was the tour operator for Harmony Airways offering package vacations to the Hawaiian Islands, California and Nevada, and offers connecting flights throughout British Columbia with Hawkair and Pacific Coastal Airlines. They also had an agreement with Air North for flights to and from Whitehorse. From Oahu and Maui, there were connecting flights with Hawaiian Airlines to the other Hawaiian Islands.
Harmony Vacations offer packages to: Las Vegas, Primm (Primm Valley), Palm Springs (seasonally), Honolulu, Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii ("The Big Island").

Fleet

Previously operated

★ Boeing 757-200
As of March 2007 the Harmony Airways fleet included 4 Boeing 757-200 On March 22, 2007 the National Post reported that Harmony Airways would reduce its fleet to 3 Boeing 757-200.
^[4]

Partner airlines

'Canada and US'

★ Air North

★ Hawaiian Airlines
'Asia and Oceania'

★ China Eastern Airlines

★ Air Pacific

★ Japan Airlines

External links

★ Harmony Airways

★ Harmony Vacations

References

1. Flight International 3 April 2007
2. Canada Today
3. CBC
4. Harmony's flight plan hits China wall


★ [1]