Hawaiian Airlines Credit Card Comes Back But Without Clear Answers

After a long stretch of silence, the legacy Hawaiian Airlines–branded credit card is quietly back, though the way it returned only adds to the confusion that has surrounded it for months.

The card returns.

Applications for the Hawaiian Airlines Bank of Hawaii World Elite Mastercard are open again, offering 60,000 Atmos Rewards points after $2,000 in spending within 90 days, with a $99 annual fee. A business version is also available, offering 50,000 points after $4,000 in spending, bringing the familiar Hawaiian-branded card back into full availability.

If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the same card that effectively vanished last fall when HawaiianMiles shut down and Atmos Rewards took over, a transition that left travelers staring at broken application links and unclear explanations.

What we were told at the time.

At the time, Barclays and Hawaiian insisted the credit card was not going away, even as application pages returned 404 errors and cardholders were left guessing about what would come next. We covered that confusion extensively, and for a while nothing much changed other than growing uncertainty.

Now the card is back, but the picture is still unclear. When we first reported on the card’s disappearance last year, Barclays contacted us directly with a statement attributed to Doug Villone, Head of Cards and Partnerships. He said the Hawaiian credit card program would “remain intact for the next several years.” That may still be true, but the unexplained disappearance and reappearance of application links suggests a situation far less settled than that assurance implied.

The bigger picture on the Hawaiian credit card.

The issuer is still Barclays, but the card is now surfaced through Bank of Hawaii, adding another layer to an already tangled setup. For longtime Hawaiian flyers, it is hard to tell whether this represents a meaningful return or simply a reshuffling behind the scenes.

That distinction is significant because Alaska Airlines has a long and lucrative credit card relationship with Bank of America. That partnership is widely viewed as one of the most valuable parts of Alaska’s entire business, potentially rivaling the economics of flying itself. When Alaska acquired Hawaiian, many assumed it was only a matter of time before Hawaiian’s card portfolio followed the same path to Bank of America.

A card back in limbo.

So far, that has not happened. Instead, the Hawaiian-branded card survives in a kind of back and forth situation, earning Atmos points now rather than the old HawaiianMiles and existing alongside Alaska’s own cards. All that without any clear road map for how long this arrangement is meant to last.

For travelers simply chasing points, there are richer offers elsewhere, including significantly larger bonuses on Alaska’s Atmos cards. For Hawaii residents who care about continuity, branding, and what survives from the old Hawaiian ecosystem, this looks less like a fresh start and more like a respite on borrowed time.

The card may be available again, but the uncertainty that has surrounded it since the merger remains firmly in place.