Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Hawaiian Airlines commemorated 40 years of service connecting Honolulu and Pago Pago in America Samoa last week Thursday. The celebration featured hula and music during a gate side ceremony in Honolulu.

Hawaiian Airlines inaugurated flights to Pago Pago International Airport in American Samoa on Oct. 24, 1984, with DC-8 aircraft, starting its long relationship with the US territory. The route also marked an important milestone in Hawaiian Airlines history by becoming the company’s first regularly scheduled, nonstop transpacific passenger service – preceding its flights between Honolulu and Los Angeles that launched the following year. Hawaiian currently provides two weekly flights between Honolulu (HNL) and Pago Pago (PPG) with widebody Airbus A330 aircraft.

Hawaiian Airlines CEO Joe Sprague joined employees who celebrated the anniversary alongside guests prior to the departure of flight HA465 from Honolulu on Thursday afternoon. Festivities are also planned in Pago Pago, including a community service event.

Meanwhile, Hawaiian Airlines plans to eliminate 73 people from its 1,400 non contract workforce in Hawaii and on the mainland in the wake of its recent merger with Alaska Air Group Inc.

The job reductions come more than a month after Alaska Air group, parent company of Alaska airlines, announced in September that it completed its $1.9 billion acquisition of Hawaii Holdings, parent company of Hawaiian Airlines. The merger is the first major U.S. airline combination since 2016 when federal regulators allowed Alaska to merge with Virgin America.

Hawaiian spokesperson Alex Da Silva said a vast majority of Hawaii’s noncontract employees “received offers to stay with the combined organization for at least 6 months, and the intent is to retain most people for a year or longer, many with long-term offers. We are also continuing to encourage everyone to apply for open roles within our combined organization.”

Da Silva added, “We expect some non-contract interim positions tied to specific integration milestones to conclude once projects are completed in the next 6 to 18 months.”

More reductions could occur as the airlines get closer to operating under a single operating certificate. Aviation historian Peter Forman said he expects more layoffs of nonbargaining members will come, especially as interim jobs come to a close.

“This is such a small number of layoffs, I expect that there could be more but maybe not significantly more,” he said. “There’s not huge numbers of overlapping routes, so I think there will be a smaller number of layoffs than in most mergers, but obviously in the front office there are redundancies.”