Air Service Hawaii traces its roots back to 1948 when its antecedent began as a crop-dusting service that also performed occasional piston aircraft maintenance at Honolulu (now Daniel K. Inouye International) Airport. Along the way, it offered flight training, air charter, Cessna aircraft sales, and finally FBO services, until 1967, when it incorporated under the Air Service Hawaii name. While the company has since shed most of those businesses to concentrate on FBO operations, with six locations, it is now one of the biggest service providers in the islands. The company changed hands in 2015 when it was purchased by a group of local investors led by industry veterans Mi Kosasa and Shaen Tarter.

Honolulu (HNL) remains the company’s flagship and headquarters and unlike its sister FBOs on the other islands, which rely mainly on tourist traffic, sees a steady pace through the year, with a slight bump from December through January. “Honolulu sees a lot of business traffic on the way to and from the mainland and Asia, Australia, and New Zealand,” said Tarter, who serves as company president. As such, the FBO is well equipped to perform quick turns. The service providers at HNL draw from the airport’s fuel storage which, given the island’s location as a waypoint in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is an astounding 42 million gallons of jet-A. It is distributed between the on-airport storage tanks and those on nearby Sand Island, which is connected via pipeline. The three FBOs also perform the into-plane service for all aircraft including commercial, and the airport is equipped with a hydrant fueling system. Air Service Hawaii operates four hydrant service vehicles among its ground service fleet, which also includes two 7,000-gallon and two 5,000-gallon jet fuel tankers. With its own 10,000 gallon-100LL tank, it has a pair of 1,400-gallon avgas trucks to supply piston aircraft.