Fee And Meal Service Confusion On Hawaiian As Alaska Takes Helm

A reader booking a Hawaii flight wrote us today confused about pet fees they encountered. The interisland cabin pet fee remains $35, while the transpacific cabin fee dropped from $125 to $100 as Alaska brings together Hawaiian’s pricing with its own. But the bigger story is what else readers are finding at booking and onboard, from fees to meals, as Hawaiian’s old terms get replaced with ones the new airline can actually afford to keep.

Correction: An earlier version of this article reported that the interisland cabin pet fee had risen from $35 to $100, which isn’t correct. The interisland fee remains $35. The $100 figure applies to transpacific cabin pet travel, which dropped from $125 as part of Alaska’s bringing Hawaiian fees into alignment. An earlier version of Hawaiian’s help center page led with the $100 fee announcement and listed the $35 interisland exception as a single line below it, which is how the misread occurred. That appears consistent with how our reader described her experience. Hawaiian has updated its consumer policy page to put the interisland exception in the lead pricing sentence. We thank Alaska Airlines for flagging the error, and we have updated the piece throughout. (Beat of Hawaii)

The $35 interisland fee held. The $125 mainland fee dropped.

Hawaiian’s longtime interisland cabin pet fee remains $35, the same price residents and repeat visitors have known for years. The transpacific cabin pet fee dropped from $125 to $100 as part of combining with Alaska. Checked pet fees also moved, with transpacific checked dropping from $225 to $200, and interisland checked at $60. The picture is mixed, with some fees down and others holding, but the way the policy reads at first glance is what’s tripping up travelers at booking.

The new transpacific fee is closer to what mainland carriers already charge for pets in the cabin, where $100 to $150 has long been common. The interisland fee remains well below mainland norms.

The reader who got confused at booking.

One reader wrote to us after seeing what she believed was a sharp interisland pet-fee increase at booking. The interisland fee had not actually changed, but the confusion is real, and it’s part of the changes travelers are reporting during the Alaska transition.

“Alaska is not better in another way. Today I discovered that taking a pet on an inter island flight is now $100 as opposed to $35 with Hawaiian. Had I made my pet reservation just 2 days ago I would have saved $65 per way. Outrageous! This is not in the spirit of Aloha.”

To clarify, the interisland cabin pet fee is still $35, not $100. The reader’s experience appears to reflect a misread of Hawaiian’s policy page or a booking process that wasn’t clear about which fee applied. Either way, moments of confusion are what readers keep reporting to us.

The meal that still isn’t.

The pet fee is one data point, and meals are another. Readers are describing gaps between what they expected from Hawaiian and what they received on flights, part of a longer pattern of small Hawaiian touches changing, being repriced, reduced, or still unclear during this week’s transition.

One reader booked a mainland flight under the Hawaiian name and reported the meal didn’t match what was promised.

“I just flew on a ‘Hawaiian’ flight from Hawaii to the mainland and having doubts about service changes, I checked 2 weeks, and then 72 hours in advance to pre-order a meal in premier class seating. It stated meals for that flight were complimentary but we got a bag of snack mix only. It is disappointing to experience these inconsistent changes among the Alaska takeover.”

Comments we have received at Beat of Hawaii say that complimentary meals are still being phased out. Readers are reporting, and employee accounts are pointing in the same direction. Food that once defined Hawaiian’s mainland and long-haul service is being reduced, reworked, or shifted. Alaska sent us a different message this week when we wrote about Hawaiian Air meal service:

“There are no changes to our complimentary meal service in our main cabins. During our PSS transition, several dual‑brand content updates were made to our webpages, and the link referenced in your post was unintentionally directing to an Alaska Airlines pre‑order page. We’re working to correct that now.

Two days later, however, there’s no sign on Hawaiian’s own food page of what complimentary meals in economy still exist. The page only refers to business class meals.

A reader says what BOH has been reporting.

One longtime BOH reader put it in harsher terms than we would have chosen. The loss did not begin on one date. It came through smaller moves, thinner service, and a pricing model that kept asking the question of whether the old Hawaiian Air experience could survive as a standalone airline model.

“I am having trouble understanding why people are mourning the loss of Hawaiian Airlines. It died years ago making incremental changes to their image and service. Flying Hawaiian airlines in their heyday was a special experience. But, like many other things in life right now, there’s little left of what we once knew.”

The old Hawaiian experience had been fading long before Alaska took control, even while many travelers still hoped the brand, the food, the service style, and the Hawaii-specific aspects they still remember fondly would remain intact. Alaska did not create the problems Hawaii travelers are feeling, but the acquisition is forcing the pricing and service reset into public view in a big way. The $35 pet fee moving to $100 is just another example.

The longhaul issues also come into focus.

One reader just described a much 10,000 mile trip on Hawaiian this week, where the food issue became harder to understand because of the route length and total travel time.

“I just got off a 9hr flight from Sydney Australia. We had a light meal on that flight…. a 3hr stop over and now am on a 9-10hr flight to JFK and now I have to purchase food and drinks. Absolutely pathetic for such a long flight.”

The undoubtedly soon to be resolved pattern has three points: an interisland fee increase, a premier-class meal gap, and a long-haul food complaint. Travelers are bringing old Hawaiian expectations into a new system where fees, meals, and what’s included are being reset.

We’ve experienced this ourselves in countless mileage upgrades from economy to business/first class on Hawaiian flights. These were offered at pricing too low to be sustainable, and compared with the rest of the industry. Those cheap mileage upgrades are now gone.

That kind of value built loyalty. But it also created an obvious question for any acquiring airline. Cheap fees, too generous upgrades, included meals, and other unique offerings helped Hawaiian feel different. They also left Hawaiian in terrible financial straits. And they leave Alaska with plenty of places where the larger airline can raise, remove, or reprice things.

Why the old Hawaiian couldn’t last.

For longtime Hawaiian travelers, this part is still uncomfortable. Many of the things people loved were real, but they were priced in a way that was hard to defend commercially once Hawaiian was no longer standing by itself. A bigger carrier absorbs a smaller one and necessarily looks for alignment. The cheaper system moves toward the more expensive one, and not the other way around.

Hawaiian’s “Aloha discount” is what the merger ended. The brand still appears, the Pualani paint job remains, and the word Hawaiian still carries deep meaning for many travelers. But the pricing system underneath is changing. That is how the pet fee increase connects to the meal complaints, the upgrade math, and more.

Hawaiian’s standalone pricing was not sustainable, and that reality is part of what made the acquisition necessary. Travelers can be angry about the loss and still see why the old setup wasn’t going to survive once a larger airline took over.

What to expect.

Don’t assume legacy Hawaiian terms still apply just because the flight is to, from, or within Hawaii. Check at booking, especially pets, bags, seats, food, and upgrade options. Check again too before departure, because readers are already finding gaps between what they expected, what they saw online, and what they report happened onboard.

For meals on mainland and long-haul flights, don’t rely on memory from past Hawaiian trips. Look closely at what is included, what must be pre-ordered, and what may now be sold onboard. If the site and the airline say one thing and the cabin delivers another, that’s the gap readers are now reporting.

Have you booked a Hawaii flight, interisland or mainland, since the merger took hold? What did you expect based on past Hawaiian service, and what did you actually get?