ORLANDO, Fla. — Friday is a historic day for Orlando International Airport as the first-ever nonstop flight from Honolulu has now arrived at The City Beautiful.

The first outbound flight to Honolulu leaves Saturday morning.

It is the beginning of a significant connection during an extraordinary time that is impacted travel unlike ever before, the coronavirus pandemic.

Hawaiian Airlines is operating two roundtrip flights per week to Orlando with an Airbus 330-200 aircraft with 278 seats.

This comes at a time where passenger traffic at Orlando International Airport is increasing, at the height of the pandemic in April 2020, passenger traffic was down about 98%

Now, it is down about 50 to 60% compared to before the pandemic.

GOAA CEO Phil Brown said things are looking up.

"We're encouraged by the fact that vaccines are being implemented not only here in Central Florida, but elsewhere, so I think that helps facilitate passengers flying, because I think they feel much more comfortable flying," Brown said.

Brown said in November, December, and January Orlando International Airport was number one for departing passengers nationwide, but connecting passengers were still low.

The airport is expecting a rebound with about a 45% increase in passenger traffic over spring break this year compared to last year.

Hawaiian Airlines CEO Peter Ingram told Spectrum News this flight to Orlando has been years in the making.

Last year during the pandemic, they thought about using available aircraft that were grounded from their more traditional routes, to broaden their network to Orlando.

"It's one of the largest, unserved, nonstop routes in terms of existing demand, and we think putting a nonstop route in, traditionally will stimulate that demand even further," Ingram said.

He expects this route to be successful since there is pent-up demand for leisure travel during the pandemic and Orlando and Hawaii are both leisure destinations.

The airline is starting off cautiously with two flights a week but will look to expand service to Orlando in the coming months.

"We expect the demand on this flight to be about 50/50 split between people traveling from Florida to Hawaii and people traveling from Hawaii to Florida, and our early indicators of the bookings have been playing out pretty much exactly like that," Ingram said.