Wherever your Hawaii vacation begins, we all want Hawaii deals to make it more affordable. New flights and larger planes will create added competition on several routes to help make that possible.
Portland is largely the recipient of today’s good news, as that market is starting to quickly heat up. It may soon be second only to the San Francisco Bay Area in terms of the best Hawaii deals.
All of the airlines serving Hawaii have become adept at quickly changing routes and frequency. That’s done in order to reduce excess capacity that would otherwise result in unsustainably low airfares. In fact sometimes it’s hard to keep up with which routes are operating on what days in each season.
Alaska Airlines increases Portland service nonstop to and from Hawaii as follows:
- To Kona – daily service through Spring 2014
- To Honolulu – daily service
- To Maui – twice daily service
- To Kauai – four times each week
We suspect Alaska will increase their Kauai service in the near future as well.
Hawaiian Airlines adds more seats to and from Portland:
While Alaska is busy adding new Hawaii flights, Hawaiian is increasing the number of seats on their daily Portland to Honolulu route. A new Airbus 330 with 294 seats has replaced the 264 seat Boeing 767.
Hawaiian Airlines Cancels San Jose to Honolulu route:
As you know, the best Hawaii deals have been from San Jose. In fact they have been too good. Hawaiian Airlines appears to be terminating its route between San Jose and Honolulu. It becomes sporadic after November 2013 and doesn’t currently appear on their schedule in 2014. Service is being routed using their San Jose to Kahului Maui flight. Alaska is set to be the carrier with the most Hawaii air service from Mineta next year.
Air New Zealand and Hawaiian Airlines battle for new South Pacific route:
Air New Zealand will increase service between Auckland and Honolulu to four times per week next year. They’ll move to five times per week during the peak summer period. Hawaiian Airlines is currently celebrating six months since the inauguration of their 3-4 times per week Kiwi service.
Hawaii makes a perfect stopover en route between the US Mainland and New Zealand. The Hawaii vacation stop helps make the trip virtually jeg-lag free.
Watch for More Kauai Deals ahead:
We expect this increased Hawaii air “lift” will result in occasional fare wars that we’ll be reporting on first.
