Your preferred airline to HNL?

[SuzanneB74]

We did ATL-HNL on Delta and it was great. Had great beverage/snack services and in flight entertainment on personal screens. Charging ports at our seats. Would fly that route on Delta again without hesitation.

Which seat type did you have? Main cabin, Delta Comfort or First Class?

 

[Tinkerdreams]

If you do decide to fly Hawaiian, I'd suggest you and/or your spouse consider applying for the Hawaiian Airlines World Elite MasterCard for the bonus miles and benefits to bring down the cost of your trip. The standard signup offer is 35,000 HawaiianMiles after spending $1,000 within 90 days of opening the card, and you get one complimentary checked bag for the primary cardholder and a one-time 50% off companion fare discount. There is a $89 annual fee for the card. If you decide to keep the card after the first year, you'll also get 5,000 HawaiianMiles each anniversary if you've spent $10,000 or more on the card the previous year, and you'll get $100 off a companion ticket.

Don't settle for this signup offer! You can get a better offer of 50,000 HawaiianMiles by going through a "dummy booking" on HawaiianAir.com. Just visit Hawaiian Airlines' website -- but don't log in or create an account just yet. Pretend like you're booking a flight, any flight, continue through several more pages of entering your personal information and selecting seats until you get to the payment page. When you get to the payment page, select "Credit/Debit Card" as your payment method. Don’t worry -- you're not actually booking the flight. An ad for the Hawaiian Airlines MasterCard should appear asking if you'd like to earn 50,000 HawaiianMiles. Of course you do! Click "Apply Now" and use this application to apply for the card. If you meet the minimum spending requirement, you'll be awarded the bonus miles that you can use to book your trip to Hawaii!

You'll eventually need to set up a HawaiianMiles account to login to and search the awards page. Awards are priced by Coach SuperSaver, Coach Saver, Coach Flex, First Class Saver, and First Class Flex tiers. The awards table looks something like this:

North America To/From Hawaii (One Way)
North America-Hawaii 20,000 (Coach SuperSaver); 30,000 (Coach Saver); 40,000 (Coach Flex); 40,000 (First Class Saver); 80,000 (First Class Flex)

There are no blackout dates for using HawaiianMiles and availability is pretty good. However, I've never flown out of BOS, and I don't know if you can mix awards on Hawaiian flights with other airlines. Something to look into. Good luck!

This looks great! I have 2 questions. If you go through and get the 50,000 points, and I look at the one way points, can I assume if I choose the Supersaver that the 50,000 points would cover the entire roundtrip flight? Second question, would you also be able to use the 50% off companion fare?

Thanks for the great info!

 

[CaliAdventurer]

Hawaiian IMO is a bit antiquated in feel but is still my 2nd choice when flying to Hawaii. The planes seem kind of old and the service is not overtly friendly. The thing that tipped the scale for me was the check in process in HNL. OMG, its ridiculous. There are just all these round self service counters and you have to weigh your own bags and then go line up to drop them at the belt. the bags don't weigh properly have the time and its just an unnecessary complication when flying with a group/family. BUT I'd totally fly them again before other airlines if Alaska wasn't an option and I'd stay home if I had to fly United.

 

[Lain]

This looks great! I have 2 questions. If you go through and get the 50,000 points, and I look at the one way points, can I assume if I choose the Supersaver that the 50,000 points would cover the entire roundtrip flight? Second question, would you also be able to use the 50% off companion fare?

Thanks for the great info!

I'll try best to remember my experience but I don't want to steer anyone wrong with inaccurate information, so you should absolutely contact Hawaiian Airlines' customer service reps with any questions that are specific to your situation.

I believe award travel is based on your travel dates, route, and fare availability. So for example, I've been casually searching for award fares from SFO<->HNL during the holidays, but didn't get any results for some dates that would work for us. I found a lot of availability in September for 40,000-50,000 miles round trip.

HawaiianMiles can only be used to book Hawaiian flights. So if your itinerary includes flying Southwest or JetBlue (or some other carrier) from your home airport to an airport that Hawaiian services, that search might not pull up award travel, and you may have to search for and book the legs separately, which could complicate layovers and baggage handling.

Like I've posted, I recall the companion fare discounts come with a lot of restrictions. The 50% companion fare discount only works for a round trip Hawaii <-> Mainland ticket. Also, I think the primary ticket can't be paid for with miles, and has to be paid in cash/credit. This could suck if it's just two people traveling, because you have to choose to use your miles, or pay cash to get the companion discount. If this is your situation, you may want to just use the 50% off companion discount now, charge the balance to the Hawaiian card, and bank all those miles for a future trip. ***But check with Hawaiian Airlines to be sure.***

We're a family of 3, so what my wife and I do is book one of our tickets separately with miles, and then book the other parent's ticket together with our DD using cash and the companion discount. We try to book as close in time as possible so we can select seats next to each other.

One benefit of being a Hawaiian Airlines credit card holder is you can receive miles transfers from any HawaiianMiles member. My wife is the primary cardholder and a HawaiianMiles member. I have just a HawaiianMiles number, but I use it on my flight reservations to earn almost 5,000 miles on a round trip flight and to transfer Amex Membership Reward points to, then I transfer all my miles to my wife's account when we're ready to book. I believe you can set up a HawaiianMiles account for minors, as well, so the kids can also earn miles that you can eventually pool together to redeem.

Fair warning, some of my recollection may be fuzzy because we (usually my wife since she ends up with all the miles) book about once a year for our almost annual trips to Hawaii. We haven't booked this year's trip so my memory's not as fresh. Hope this helps!

 

[MightyDuck001]

I just bought mine for Hawaiian Airlines JFK to HNL 9/1 out 9/16 back. I bought it through the JetBlue site because I have a JetBlue credit card and got 3x the points that way but it was also a huge mess (Hawaiian airlines had given them the wrong fare class or something so I had to call them and wait a few days to get it ticketed). Once I had a confirmation and ticket, I went to Hawaiian and got the extra comfort seats in the bulkhead. The base airfare without the extra comfort seats came to $876 roundtrip which was, oddly enough, about $90 less than what Hawaiian was charging on their website.

I opted to take the train up from DC to NY and see family/friends and fly out of JFK on Hawaiian instead of United direct out of Dulles. My travel companion said "Oh hey, there's a direct flight from Dulles on United!" And I just said, "I don't fly United. I will never fly United." I call it Satan's airline, I've never had a good experience with them.

 

[dmetcalfrn]

Which seat type did you have? Main cabin, Delta Comfort or First Class?

Main cabin