Sometimes, on Hawaiian Airlines, getting there is just half the fun.

Today I’ve got an airline story for a change and regular readers will not be surprised to find that it involves Hawaiian Airlines. After all, it’s our very own airline and, however parochial we might be, it’s a damn good airline and we’re proud of them!

This story has nothing to do with their planes or service, however. In fact, it’s about an incident that occurred a year or so ago in Los Angeles and on the ground.

I had just flown into LA on a Hawaiian flight and was riding to the Marriott near LAX in the hotel shuttle. The flight had been fine and the only thing in any way out of the ordinary was all the fog we had flown through on the approach into LAX … in and out of the soupy stuff for the final seven or eight minutes, almost to touch-down.

As I boarded the crowded van, I noticed two Hawaiian pilots seated a couple of rows behind me.

I nodded and asked if they had been the crew on flight 2. The younger one, the first officer, said yes, they were and he and I chatted a bit … mostly about what parts of which island we came from.

Suddenly other guy, the captain, who looked like he had come directly from Central Casting, piped up and exclaimed, “What did you think of all that fog as we were landing. Jeez … it scared the hell out of me!”

There was a pause for a couple of beats as the rest of the people on the bus turned to stare, goggle-eyed. The two pilots stared back, then cracked up.

I dunno … maybe you had to be there. But it was awfully funny at the time.