Hawaiian Airlines kicked off its interisland expansion plan yesterday with the introduction of the first of four additional Boeing 717-200 jets.

Hawaiian said it plans to add 109 roundtrip interisland flights a week once all four jets are in service at the end of January.

The state's largest carrier said the four planes will increase the company's interisland fleet to 15.

"We are committed to keeping passenger traffic moving between the Islands as conveniently as possible, and adding these four B717s will allow us to provide our customers with more flight choices," said Mark Dunkerley, Hawaiian's chief executive officer.

The new aircraft will increase Hawaiian's interisland capacity to 149,568 passenger seats a month when all four planes are phased in, a 16 percent increase over the airline's capacity at the end of September.

Hawaiian officials held a blessing ceremony yesterday at Honolulu International Airport's Interisland Terminal for the first jet.

The maiden flight, Flight 164, took off from Honolulu at 1:32 p.m. yesterday with 118 passengers bound for Kahului Airport.

Hawaiian said it will take delivery of the next 717 jet in November. The remaining two jets will be put into service in December and January.

The four 717 jets will replace a widebody Boeing 767-300 that Hawaiian began flying in the interisland market in April after Aloha Airlines shut down its passenger service. The 717 is much more fuel efficient than the 767 for the short interisland routes.

Once all four jets are placed into service, Hawaiian said it will fly 40 additional weekly round-trip flights to Kaua'i, 27 new weekly flights to Kahului, Maui, 25 additional weekly flights to Kona and 18 new roundtrips a week to Hilo.

Separately, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported yesterday that Hawaiian Airlines was the top on-time airline in the nation in August.

The DOT said 93.2 percent of Hawaiian's flights were on schedule. The results were 14 percentage points higher than the industry's average on-time record.

Hawaiian also had the best record among the 19 airlines included in the DOT's monthly survey for baggage handling. Hawaiian averaged 2.89 mishandled baggage reports for every 1,000 passengers in August.