A luxury airline owned by tech billionaire Larry Ellison plans to expand to Moloka‘i to minimize the consequences of a post-pandemic drop in commercial air carriers servicing the small island of 7,000 residents. 

Lānaʻi Air was established in 2018 as a high-end private charter service to transport Four Seasons hotel guests in style from Honolulu to resorts on Lānaʻi, the tiny isle northwest of Maui that is almost entirely owned by Ellison. 

The airline opened ticket sales to the public in January 2024 to help stabilize travel for Lānaʻi residents who must go off-island for health care, jobs and family visits after two other airlines halted service to the island, the company said at the time. Now it wants to do the same for neighboring Moloka‘i, which is situated roughly nine miles north of Lānaʻi.

“We recognize that for many residents, air travel is an essential connection to health care, work, family and daily needs, and our goal is to provide additional travel options to support those connections,” reads a statement provided by Lyssa Fujie, a spokesperson for Pulama Lānaʻi, the management company that oversees Ellison’s 98% ownership stake in the island.

The company is advertising five new jobs at Moloka‘i Airport. Meanwhile, operational details, including the timing of the launch of a Moloka‘i to Honolulu service, are still being finalized, Fujie said. 

After the coronavirus pandemic slashed the number of commercial air carriers servicing Moloka‘i and Lānaʻi from three to one, it’s been more challenging for residents to fly in and out. The ongoing disruption has caused many patients on these remote islands to miss pressing appointments with Honolulu doctors — in some cases repeatedly.

Both islands have a limited medical capacity that forces many residents to fly for routine care in Honolulu, which is a 45-minute airplane ride from Lānaʻi and 37 minutes from Moloka‘i.

A lack of access to health care in rural Hawai‘i isn’t limited to Moloka‘i and Lānaʻi. Roughly 95% of the state is considered rural. Geographically isolated areas, including the Big Island and Kaua‘i, struggle to varying degrees with a physician shortage and rely heavily on specialized health care services that are concentrated in Honolulu.

For Lānaʻi residents, Lānaʻi Air offers faster and what’s generally agreed upon to be more reliable service than Mokulele Airlines, the only commercial air carrier servicing the island. But the cost to travel on the luxe airline tends to be more expensive. A one-way ticket between Lānaʻi and Honolulu is $160 on Lānaʻi Air and about $110 on Mokulele Airlines. 

The airline’s pending arrival on Moloka‘i comes as Mokulele Airlines, the last surviving public airline operating out of Moloka‘i and Lānaʻi, accelerates its own plans to improve service for customers.

The airline in recent years has been the target of customer outrage over lengthy travel delays and flight cancellations. Mokulele executives publicly acknowledged shortcomings primarily affecting Moloka‘i and Lānaʻi residents in March 2023 and promised to “step up” service.

In 2024, the airline ushered in new leadership and doubled down on a commitment to reduce flight disruptions. The company has since expanded its fleet with new aircraft, increased the number of daily flights between Moloka‘i and Honolulu, hired 19 pilots and established a dedicated back-up aircraft to step in during mechanical breakdowns. 

Residents interviewed for this story acknowledged improvements in on-time flight departures but a pandemic-era nickname for the airline — “Moku-delay-le” — appears to have stuck for good. 

“You can’t get to your doctor appointment because the flight’s delayed — that’s often still the case,” Moloka‘i resident Walter Ritte, a longtime antidevelopment activist, said. “It’s caused a lot of pain in this community.”

Ritte, 81, said he used to fly off-island about once a week but now forgoes nonessential travel to avoid flight disruptions that he said have become routine.

Two other airlines that used to serve these two islands — Makani Kai and Ohana by Hawaiian — ceased operations in November 2020 and January 2021, respectively, as the Covid-19 pandemic decimated the travel sector, prompting airline bankruptcies, closures and downsizings worldwide.

The problem became so dire that state lawmakers last year funded a $2 million pilot project to provide free medical flights to Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi residents who struggle to access care. 

Since the program launched in January, 94 Moloka‘i residents and 40 Lānaʻi residents have used the service to reach off-island medical appointments, according to Wanda Anae-Oishi, who oversees the program for the Hawaii Department of Health Office of Planning, Policy and Program Development. The initiative is funded through June 2027.

The addition of a second airline at Moloka‘i Airport has many proponents. But some residents worry that the arrival of Lānaʻi Air on Moloka‘i could be a signal that the airline’s billionaire owner wants to extend his colossal Hawaiʻi landholdings to Moloka‘i. 

A third of the island is for sale. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly considered buying it while on a Moloka‘i hunting trip.

Listed for sale in 2017 by a Singapore-based investment firm, the 55,575-acre Moloka‘i Ranch has attracted interest from a small number of potential private buyers over the years. None of the talk has amounted to action. Meanwhile, community organizers are working on a $260 million plan to buy the ranch in a proposal inspired by a wave of successful global efforts to repatriate lands of cultural and environmental significance back to Indigenous people or other former owners.

“I’m concerned about hidden agendas,” Maui County Councilwoman Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, who lives on Moloka‘i, said. “Lānaʻi Air’s billionaire owner suddenly being interested in Moloka‘i, it raises some red flags.”

When the software mogul bought most of Lānaʻi in 2012, the $300 million purchase included a third of the housing and the water utility. In recent years, he’s added more homes, businesses and real estate to his domain, including the island’s only newspaper, the main grocery store and a county building in the heart of town where residents gathered for community meetings.

The company is known for its benevolence — it paid workers’ wages and full benefits during coronavirus pandemic lockdowns and subsidizes fuel prices at the island’s only gas station — but also its overbearance. The billionaire’s growing control of island assets has created a unique dynamic in which residents who consider Ellison their employer, landlord or both avoid speaking publicly about him and his dealings because they say they fear retaliation.

The company is currently petitioning the State Land Use Commission to reclassify 170 acres of rural and agricultural land to urban land near Sensei Lana‘i, a Four Seasons resort, as part of a bid to expand the footprint of the uber-luxurious wellness retreat.

A spokesperson for Pulama Lānaʻi did not respond to a reporter’s question about whether Ellison is interested in buying Moloka‘i Ranch.

Civil Beat’s health access reporting is supported in part by the Atherton Family Foundation.