Jim Landers has commanded missions to track down pirates and drug dealers, and flown over the world’s oceans chasing Soviet submarines.
He has also helped command the US Pacific fleet, and while in Iraq, was shot at by missiles.
Now, as Hawaiian Airlines’ senior vice president of technical operations, he has new challenges; among them is keeping its fleet of island-hopping Boeing 717 aircraft flying, dealing with Pratt & Whitney engine issues that have grounded some of the airline’s planes, and now he is about to oversee the introduction of new Dreamliners.
The 59-year-old is also setting up a vast freight network that Hawaiian will operate for e-commerce giant Amazon.
He jokes that Hawaiian Airlines is his “first real job” after 27 years as a US Navy officer, most of which he spent flying and commanding P-3C Orion surveillance missions.
“I knew nothing about the corporate world prior to joining Hawaiian,” says the Long Island, New York-born Landers.
He started out as a junior officer on a ship out of Mayport, Florida, and was sent across to the Mediterranean in the days when the US was chasing Soviet submarines in the closing years of the Cold War.
He then transitioned to naval aviation and spent 22 years flying in the nerve centre of P-3C Orions all over the globe, carrying out missions ranging from anti-submarine warfare to anti-narcotics in the Caribbean and across South America.
As a surface warfare officer and Orion naval flight officer, he amassed more than 2600 flight hours, including 42 combat support missions during conflicts in the Balkans and the Middle East. In Iraq, he was shot at by a shoulder-fired rocket and while overseeing a medivac mission at Balad, had to hit the deck fast when the base came under mortar attack.
Another hairy moment came when he was commanding an amphibious assault ship, essentially a marine aircraft carrier. “We were doing counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden and small fishing boats were coming out of the dark of night.
“After what happened to the USS Cole [blown up in 2000] in the Port of Aden and not knowing whether they were loaded with explosives and them not responding, we had to take evasive manoeuvres.”
How do these experiences translate to his key role in keeping Hawaiian Airlines flying?
“I did spend a fair amount of time 1500 miles away from the nearest base and over the ocean chasing a Soviet submarine or looking for a drug smuggler and know well the level of anxiety that starts creeping in if different aircraft systems start misbehaving,” he says.
That sheeted home “that sense of responsibility of ensuring the airplane is ready to do what it needs to do — whether it’s finding a Soviet submarine or safely taking 276 people from point A to point B. I think it’s deeply ingrained because of that experience.”
Helping to run an enormously complex organisation as director of operations for the US Pacific Fleet out of Pearl Harbour was also ideal preparation for the airline role.
At Pearl Harbour, Landers helped co-ordinate a force that covers nearly half of the Earth’s surface, from Antarctica to the Arctic Circle and from the West Coast of the US into the Indian Ocean. The fleet consists of about 200 ships, 1500 aircraft, and 150,000 military and civilian personnel.
But he didn’t have to look far when he hung up his Navy uniform. Hawaiian’s hangar is just up the freeway east of Pearl Harbour.
“I knew I always wanted to stay in Hawaii and it was a natural transition to apply my Navy talents to an airline.”
Landers says Navy leadership was about making a difference to those under his command, and their quality of life.
“Here my favourite job is to walk around the hangar floor and talk to mechanics - finding out they might have been trying to get a new torque wrench — if they tell me, they know it should be tomorrow.”
When he started at Hawaiian 10 years ago, it was as director of strategic transformation, which was a way for the company to bring in talent.
Maintenance was Landers’ natural destination.
“I felt comfortable with being able to speak the language — the language of naval aviation, FAA requirements needed a little bit of translation but the same principles of physics that apply to a grey airplane apply to a white and purple airplane,” he says.
Landers says “the machines actually get a vote” over what sort of day engineers have.
“We certainly have a responsibility in making sure we’re avoiding as many disruptions as possible a day, but we’re moving people in machines and machines break.”
The airline has been affected by the same Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engine maintenance problems that have hit Air New Zealand and other airlines around the world.
Landers says Hawaiian went in “eyes open” to select the ultra-efficient geared turbofan P&W engines in 2015.
“It is a phenomenal engine with a few challenges, not terribly unlike others I’ve heard of from new engine technology introductions — we’ve battled our way through leaky bearings or blades that were manufactured out of the wrong material.”
But the most challenging issue has been the supply chain disruptions stemming from the pandemic at much the same time that engines were being taken off plane wings around the world.
Landers understands that Pratt’s maintenance, repair, and overhaul capacity was compromised during the pandemic, with some senior people retiring and new staff having to be hired and trained.
Other issues are affecting P&W: from a titanium shortage because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to the company that cast a certain part going out of business.
“There’s a whole series of things that are really Pratt’s to solve but come trickling down to us,” says Landers. “They understand the challenges they’re passing on to us. It doesn’t overcome the fact that today [last week] we have four aircraft sitting on the ground because we have eight engines missing.”
Hawaiian’s 15 Airbus A321s are predominantly used on its western US mainland routes. The airline flies to 15 mainland cities.
“We’re pretty well resigned to this engine shortfall affecting us until the end of the year; we think Pratt is moving in the right direction but not as quickly as we would like.”
Its 19-strong fleet of Boeing 717s (originally developed as DC9s) are more a labour of love. The short inter-island hops using the planes, which have rear-mounted Rolls-Royce engines, mean they are among the hardest-working commercial aircraft in operation.
“Hawaiian has been an operator of these for more than 40 years so it’s an airplane that we know and cherish internally,” he says. “It’s built like a tank. It’s not fly by wire with a lot of fancy electronics — when you pull on the controls there’s a cable attached to that yoke so that’s really flying an airplane.”
The 19 planes fly about 170 cycles a day which means multiple take-offs and landings, leading to regular brake reconditioning (done in the hangar) and tyre changes every fortnight. The short hops between the islands sometimes take less than 30 minutes, meaning the planes fly in the salt-laden air of lower altitudes, leading to more corrosion.
By contrast, Hawaiian’s 24 A330 planes flying across the Pacific to the US, Australia, New Zealand (three times a week) and Asia fly in some of the cleanest air on earth, meaning engines can stay on the wing much longer.
Landers is also overseeing the introduction of 12 Boeing 787 Dreamliners into the fleet from the end of this year. The airline paused deliveries early in the pandemic, and the aircraft will now boost capacity on its denser long-haul markets.
The Amazon deal involves the e-commerce firm getting 15 per cent of Hawaiian shares, and the airline operating a fleet of 10 Airbus A330-300 freighters to deliver its packages.
Landers is setting up that operation. Hawaiian will supply crew, maintenance and insurance from new bases in the US.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity to diversify our revenue and really do something that is core to who we are - operating and maintaining airplanes.”
The first of those aircraft is due to start flying at the end of September.
“The contract is structured in a way that should Amazon be happy with us, there’s an opportunity to continue to expand that fleet size beyond the 10.”
Hawaii is Landers’ happy place.
His father was in the Air Force and the family moved to bases around the world. He recalls that in the Azores, while watching an Elvis Presley movie set in Hawaii, he decided that was where he wanted to end up.
“It was between two and five watching Elvis fly helicopters that I was going to fly helicopters and live in Hawaii.” He didn’t end up being a pilot, but says he “got pretty close to hitting the dartboard”.
* Hawaiian has taken what is an increasingly rare step for an airline in the current bumpy travel environment, sending a mass apology to passengers affected by a technology switchover last month. It has rewarded loyalty scheme members with air miles.
In an email signed by airline chief executive Peter Ingram, it said an upgrade to its reservations system hadn’t gone as smoothly as hoped.
“In the first few days after transition, check-in on our mobile app, website and airport kiosks, as well as ticket purchases over our website functioned at below our normal standards. We know this may have caused frustration for guests. I want to sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused,” Ingram said.
A spokesman said the airline completed the scheduled outage to upgrade its system overnight on April 18-19. By April 21 it had restored the check-in and booking services.
“We continue to work through more minor issues as we discover them. We don’t have a hard number on how many guests had challenges carrying out transactions during that period.”
Every air miles member who travelled during that period received compensation at varying levels depending on their programme status.
“We felt it was important and appropriate to provide our guests meaningful compensation that they could enjoy when booking their next Hawaiian Airlines flight,” the spokesman said.
One route had three times the average rate of cancellations.