'Mainline Airways LLC' Has No Airplanes, Etc.

It sounded like entreprenurism on steroids: offer cut-rate tickets on line, and buy the services needed to transport the PAX, when enough money piled up. The judge, Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Hifo, wasn't buying.

She issued a temporary restraining order Friday, prohibiting Mainline from continuing to collect money for its promised flights; some fares were as low as $89 (plus about 33% extra, for taxes and fees) between Honolulu and LA.

Hawaii's Director of the state Department of Commerce and Consider Affairs, Mark Recktenwald, said, "It takes more than a Web site to start an airline. From the evidence gathered thus far it does not appear that Mainline has much more than that." The judge agreed.

Luke R. Thompson, named in the court order and identified on a company letterhead as Mainline's chief executive, told the AP that he hadn't known about the court order, and the state said it wasn't sure he did, in fact, know. Thompson himself was last contacted in Pennsylvania; the Hawaiian "airline's" company letterhead address is in Massachusetts; its FAX number is New York; and its telephone number is a New Jersey address. That may have been part of the confusion.

The FAA said that it's against rules to offer flights for hire without proper authorizations. The feds didn't know where Mainline's claim of "... an exclusive fleet of state-of-the-art, Boeing commercial aircraft" had come from. Mainline, as well as anyone has been able to determine, has no employees, places of business, or gates at either Los Angeles or Honolulu.

The website, www.mainlineairways.com, which had been operating as recently as Monday, was not reachable on Wednesday.

FMI: www.faa.gov