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Enroute Traffic Avoidance
Make a special effort to watch for other traffic during your tour of the
islands. Most light planes in Hawaii fly the same routes between airports
(staying just offshore) and fly at only a few different altitudes (between
1500 and 3000 feet MSL). Consequently, a large percentage of the state's
air traffic is concentrated within a relatively small piece of the sky.
Watching closely for other traffic and flying at appropriate altitudes
are your two best actions for avoiding a close encounter with another
airplane. However, you can also help yourself avoid other traffic by using
plane-to-plane communications and scheduling your trip so as to miss the
flights of scheduled tour planes.
In Hawaii, professional air tour planes
traverse the skies daily. Several different companies are based in Honolulu
and fly tourists among the islands in light twins. Sometimes several of
these planes will travel in a pack spread out over a few miles, and traffic
avoidance can become very interesting if you should fly into one of these
packs. The tour planes typically follow the same schedule. Departures
from Honolulu take place at about 8 a.m. with flights proceeding over
Lanai to either Maui or the Big Island for lunch stops. Then in early
afternoon they're airborne again and heading along the north shore of
Molokai and over Oahu enroute to Kauai. Kauai is circled in a clockwise
direction, and the planes then land at Lihue Airport for a few hours to
allow the passengers to take a boat trip. In late afternoon the tour planes
depart Lihue and race to Honolulu International like horses heading to
the barn at the end of the day.
Plane-to-plane communications on frequency
122.9 are heavily used in Hawaii. A typical transmission will be structured
such as: “North Shore Molokai Traffic, Cessna 761HB is approaching Ilio
Point at 2500, eastbound.” Although most transmissions are made by commuter
airline pilots, all pilots are encouraged to participate. The north and
south shores of Molokai are heavily traveled routes and generate a great
number of plane-to-plane communications. Pilots flying along Maui's shoreline
between Opana Point and the eastern corner of the island should address
transmissions to “Hana Traffic,” and for flights along the northern shore
of the Big Island, transmissions should be addressed to “Hamakua Coast
Traffic.