Hawaiian Airlines Flight Diverted due to Generator Issue

A Hawaiian Airlines flight had to alter its flight plan Friday due to problems with the aircraft — at least the third such instance in less than a week.

Hawaiian Airlines flight 51 from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu was diverted to Los Angeles due to a mechanical issue.

“About 2 hours and 45 minutes into the flight, we detected a fault in one of the aircraft’s three generators,” said Hawaiian spokesperson Alex DaSilva.

DaSilva added that the problem, which sent 237 passengers and 12 crew members to LAX as a precautionary measure, is uncommon.

“We operate more than 260 daily system-wide flights, and this issue is not common,” DaSilva said. “It’s important to note that many of our flights, like HA51, adhere to stricter safety regulations governing Extended Twin Operations because they travel long, over-water distances between suitable airports. Today’s generator issue led our captain to proceed to a suitable airport (in this case, LAX) prior to entering the Pacific portion of the flight so we could address the issue.”

A potential issue with an engine forced HA26 to turn around 30 minutes into a flight from Honolulu to Portland last Sunday. Another flight dealt with a generator problem on Thursday.

“Yesterday afternoon, our flight HA34 with nonstop service from Maui (OGG) to LAX operated by a different Airbus A330 aircraft diverted to Honolulu due to an unrelated generator issue,” DaSilva said. “We have since replaced the affected generator on that aircraft. The Airbus A330 operating today’s HA51 will be ferried from LAX to Honolulu for inspection. In both incidents, the aircraft performance was unaffected, and the two other generators remained available with no resulting decrease in electrical capability.”

Passengers were accommodated with other flights to Hawai‘i, DaSilva said.