Today is day four, following what will long be remembered as the mangled Hawaiian Airlines’ reservation system upgrade to Amedeus from Sabre. We’re happy to report that the situation is much better today, which is excellent news for everyone. However, as you’ll see below, work remains to be done.
In the end, while 830 flights were delayed, it went far beyond that, and the impact on those traveling, the airline’s staff, and the company’s finances were enormous. We don’t know yet if the magnitude of this event will come under the purview of the Department of Transportation if for no other reason than a large number of delayed flights.
Many, if not most, passengers were caught entirely unaware, as we were, about the upgrade event occurring. No one, likely including Hawaiian, was aware that the problems would be so severe – stopping all website and app reservations for days and preventing check-ins, among other things. We’ll surely learn more about what actually went wrong soon.
When Southwest had its nationwide meltdown last December, it was of a vastly different nature and size, impacting tens of thousands of flights. Southwest, which is some ten times larger than Hawaiian, did not have the technology and other resources to manage the issues that escalated rapidly from a horrendous weather event into a nationwide shutdown for the airline. On top of that, last week, Southwest had a mini-meltdown when a software firewall failure led to a brief nationwide ground stop. Southwest’s lack of investment in appropriate technology has been repeatedly called out as the core of its problems.
Lack of appropriate technology investment certainly isn’t the case at Hawaiian. In any event, however, what’s most reminiscent is how quickly things can spiral out of control, even at companies like these two airlines, which are behemoths of the travel industry. And that when things do go awry, travelers can suffer greatly.
As of Saturday evening, April 22, Hawaiian’s issues are far fewer.
Earlier today, their app started working again after being inaccessible since Wednesday. This morning, for example, when BOH checked on a flight next week using the app, the reservation could not be found, whereas a previously canceled flight reappeared as an active reservation.
The Hawaiian Airlines’ website is also working again. We were able to make new reservations and also retrieve existing reservations.
Hawaiian Airlines flights cannot, however, be found on Google Flights. They disappeared from the essential flight portal, which is not fixed as of Saturday evening. If you start your flight searches on Google Flights like many other people, and we do, you will notice that their flights are noticeably absent, per the image below.
830 Hawaiian Airlines flight delays since Wednesday:
What is most apparent is that the number of delays is now less than half of what it has been over the past few days.
1. Wednesday, 4/19. (251 flights delayed).
- Honolulu: 127 flights were delayed, or 83% of all flights.
- Maui: 61 flights were delayed, or 82% of all flights.
- Lihue: 33 flights were delayed, or 89% of all flights.
- Kona: 30 flights were delayed, or 78% of all flights.
2. Thursday, 4/20. (259 flights delayed).
- Honolulu: 131 flights were delayed, or 67% of all flights.
- Maui: 61 flights were delayed, or 67% of all flights.
- Lihue: 33 flights were delayed, or 68% of all flights.
- Kona: 34 flights were delayed, or 72% of all flights.
3. Friday, 4/21. (229 flights delayed).
- Honolulu: 108 flights were delayed, or 55% of all flights.
- Maui: 61 flights were delayed, or 67% of all flights.
- Lihue: 30 flights were delayed, or 62% of all flights.
- Kona: 30 flights were delayed, or 78% of all flights.
4. Saturday, 4/22. (91 flights delayed).
- Honolulu: 47 flights were delayed, or 25% of all flights.
- Maui: 23 flights were delayed, or 27% of all flights.
- Lihue: 14 flights were delayed, or 31% of all flights.
- Kona: 7 flights were delayed, or 15% of all flights.
Here’s what happened From Wednesday through Friday.
- Booking tickets online remained unavailable, and the call center was overwhelmed with calls.
- Confirmation codes changed, and the old ones ceased working on all platforms.
- Flight check-in online and at airport lobby kiosks stopped.
- Check-in was only via an airport agent.
- Changes to reservations were not available online. Hawaiian said, “To make changes to existing tickets after April 19, 2023, please contact our Reservations Department. We will be implementing new, enhanced self-service flight changes on our website and app in the future.”
- Fare holds ended abruptly. The ability to hold a reservation has been suspended.
- Saved credit cards disappeared. After April 19, 2023, any existing saved payment methods will not transition to our upgraded system.”
- App Saved Travelers disappeared. “The ability to select travelers saved to My Account will be temporarily unavailable.”
- Companion fare offers became unavailable. “discount code via email instead of through the HawaiianMiles member dashboard” are due to be sent out soon. We haven’t received them thus far.
Today the red warning banner that had topped the website changed from red to purple. You can read their latest update on the situation here.
Earlier warning:
“Scheduled system outage: April 18-19
Our scheduled system outage is complete, but booking new tickets on HawaiianAirlines.com or on our mobile app is not yet available as we bring our systems back online. You may book new tickets through your preferred online travel agency.
We are also experiencing intermittent errors with check-in on our website. For best results, you can use the mobile app to check-in for your flight or see an agent at the airport.
Our contact center is experiencing high call volume, and you may experience longer than normal hold times. Thank you for your patience and please click here for more information on our technology upgrade.”
Hawaiian Airlines’ Facebook page went silent for two days.
Its typically busy Facebook page went silent from Tuesday at 11 am until Thursday afternoon. Perhaps more significantly, there was never an announcement of the forthcoming upgrade on their Facebook page.
Comments included the following:
“Are you joking! 4 hours yesterday, 2 hours in first class line, with each customer taking 30 minutes plus…only 2 agents and the line 40 deep…because you did your training in January and had no assistance yesterday from the software company that provided the new software; the agents were searching through training manuals to try to figure out how to work the new software and…when everything went to hell, nothing but crickets. This was completely avoidable, and all of us who had to endure should get Compensated. Reminded me of the Southwest fiasco.
“Same happened to us. Everyone on our flight “lost” their seat assignments due to the system change and were reissued seats at random. This broke up many families who had paid the extra cost to select better seats together over 9 months ago, yet were not compensated. We sat on the tarmac for 2 hours yesterday while the poor ground crew and flight crew did their best to get everyone a seat… To add insult to our injury Hawaiian lost our luggage (along with everyone else who started their journey in Kauai) despite the hours long delay at the gate on our second flight.
“20-year Platinum member. Aloha is gone from HA. They don’t care anymore.”
“Shame on you Hawaiian Airlines. We can’t book online or via the app and yet you give us no updates as to when this issue will be fixed. Just called to book my flights and waited for 52 minutes, only to result in someone picking up the line, then hanging up. Terrible, terrible, terrible. I know this is unforeseen, but at the very least, keep your customers updated on the progress so we’re not wasting our time.”
“I saw the chaos firsthand at Kahului (OGG) on 4/20/2023. I completed my work assignment earlier than expected and decided to switch to an earlier flight back to Honolulu, which has Never been an issue in the past. While waiting in the Guest Services line, I watched 4 people (3 HawnAir employees and 1 Amadeus employee) hovering over one PC trying to figure something out. Meanwhile, the line is getting longer. Fortunately, HawaiianAir representative at the “Bag Drop” counter waved me over and got me switched to an earlier flight, which ended up being delayed 90 minutes. Good thing I got on that flight, though, because my original flight out was cancelled at the last minute. Time to switch to Southwest?”
Why Hawaiian moved from Sabre to Amadeus.
Hawaiian joins other tech-heavy airlines, like Etihad, which seemed to have rather seamlessly completed its move from Sabre to Amadeus last month. Other Amadeus customers include British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Qatar, Lufthansa and Air France/KLM. You may recall that Southwest Airlines also moved to Amadeus about five years ago.
How were you impacted this week by the Hawaiian Airlines software problems?
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It’s May 1st and they were still over 2 hours late taking off from Maui to Las Vegas.
Nice headline BOH “Reminiscent of Southwest: Hawaiian Airlines Debacle Delayed 830 Flights” A screwup like Hawaiians should deserver its very own headline. I know you folks have Hawaiian as a sponsor and they are the “Bellwether” of Hawaii, but you guys should be fair and objective. Hawaiian has a much simpler operation than southwest with a 1/6 of the number of flights daily.
A screw up like theirs deserves its very own headline and you guys need to stop either overtly or covertly bashing SWA. It should also be noted that SWA’s problems had a very minor impact on the Hawaii operations and they operated full schedule during covid.
Hi Dan.
Just to be clear. We have no more financial relationship with Hawaiian than we do with Southwest. They are not “a sponsor” of Beat of Hawaii in any way. Both airlines (and others) choose to advertise on Beat of Hawaii through ad auctions, which is its extent. And when Beat of Hawaii travels, it is always paid for by Beat of Hawaii.
Aloha.
DAN, SWA shut down their Hawaii flights when they had their issues. Their issues are much deeper as their problems are a ticking time bomb waiting to happen again (the VP of the pilots union said so) The issue is they have to reboot their antiquated system every night (which is why there are no red eye’s?) SWA’s problems are far deeper. SWA had no business flying to Hawaii during Covid, they weren’t needed but they were trying to break into the market and saw an opening. It appears their business model doesn’t really work flying Transpac… especially their satellite inter island service. SWA boosted about “coming after Hawaiian” when they started here, they deserve all the negative comparisons they are receiving.
The Hawaiian issue is dwarfed by the SWA issues in severity and scale which are endemic to SWA’s existing technology and lack of spending on technology upgrades vs. Hawaiian’s recent issue during a transition to an upgrade. Also the severity difference between a delay and a cancellation , so 830 delays (HAL) versus 16,700 cancellations (SWA) is comparing two different things, and even if SWA’s were just delays (which they have plenty of on a normal basis) it is not even 6 times the scale stated, far far more. Hawaiian kept trying and got it done, SWA just gave up and cancelled, they lost control and didn’t know which crews where in which aircraft. I didn’t get to see my grand-daughter at Christmas thanks to SWA.
Complain, complain, complain!
If you really wanted to fix the airline system you’d tell people about the Airline Regulation Act, in force until 1978, and push for its reinstatement. Airlines were regulated by the CAB specifically to eliminate today’s chaotic airfare competition: a ticket cost exactly the same on every route, regardless of the airline. The CAB guaranteed that consumers paid a reasonable fare, and that each carrier made a reasonable profit. The airlines competed for customers by providing the best comfort, best service, most legroom, greatest meals, etc. And the system eliminated the constant appearance of new low-cost carriers and the chaos and miserable service they brought with them.
Logged into my Hawaiian Miles Account. Went to MY TRIPS & entered confirmation code and/or ticket number and last name for an upcoming trip to Japan, it displays this message – Sorry!
We’re sorry, the last name and Confirmation Code or eTicket Number entered could not be located. If travel has already occurred, please use your 13-digit eTicket Number, as the Confirmation Code is no longer valid. If you continue to experience difficulty accessing a future or past reservation, please contact us. [WEB:MT100]
This is an upcoming trip, not a past trip. Neither the 6-diget Confirmation Code, nor 13-digit eTicket Number works.Let’s hope they get this sorted out ASAP and send out an email to all of their customers that this has been resolved!
Hey Lisa B did they resolve your problem? I have the same one and I’ve spent 12 hours on the phone to only get garbage answers. They said my trip was never ticketed when I booked in February for our trip in May. It literally showed our trip and was paid for up until the day of the update. Then like magic my miles were fully refunded and Hawaiian says its not their fault. I’m driving to speak to a ticket agent tomorrow to hopefully get this sorted out.
This was the last straw for me and HI airlines. They are just a disaster, and have completely lost touch with their high rev customers, as far as service and benefits. This mess caused a canceled flight, endless delays on the others (to and from ITO), long lines to check in, and to finally add insult to injury, they not only insisted in charging me for a single overweight bag (If I ever fly them again I will bring 2 empty suitcases, and let them handle 2 instead of 1) and couldnt figure out How to charge me for the bag, so that made my wait at the check in counter even longer. So, I am giving away what few miles I have left, canceling the credit card, and not renewing premier club. I’m taking my money elsewhere.
I flew from JFK to ITO on April 20th. No boarding pass via app, 1 1/2 hour flight delay annnounced, 3 hour actual delay, no communication at the gate, not nearly enough seats at Gate 23B for all waiting passengers, 50 minutes on tarmac to reset entertainments system. Only good thing: connecting flight ALSO delayed more than a hour, so I made it! Cabin crew were fabulous, but the experience was awful. Hawaiian used to be the gold standard — but it’s been awful for at least a month. I have several friends who have missed medical appointments in Honolulu because of long long delays. I have another Hawaiian mainland flight coming up and will be looking at alternative airline 🙁 Please, Hawaiian, get back to your on-time with Aloha service.
I flew Sat 4/22 (ogg>hnl>san)-it was a complete nightmare.They didn’t have my flight
confirmed as an “actual” ticket and I spent 5 hours on the phone with them the day
before trying to get that fixed + totally new and different Conf.Codes. They tried to
blame me saying I asked for a refund on Jan.11th (the actual day I bought the tix!)At
ogg I was at checkin with 5 agents for 1 1/2 hours (2 Amadeus & 3 HA) attempting to fix this & no ability to print out my boarding pass.They told me to try and get it fixed at hnl. Really? So glad I spent $2k on 1st class to be treated like that. Flown with them forever, even got their credit card to save points for trips. Looking elsewhere from now on. Big disappointment, no aloha spirit, no compensation.
No future trips are showing when signed in to Hawaiian Miles.
Cannot add future trips on the website or on the app
We will see how HA responds:
Do they treat this as a public relations problem?
or do they apologize, fix the problems and improve customer service?
I am not sure why you are reporting that customers were not aware that the res system upgrade was going to occur. Hawaiian sent out an email to its customers prior to the upgrade. Pualani Elite members also received a second email a few days before the upgrade. It has also been know to Pualani Elite members for over a year that the new res system was set to be implemented in April. Yes it has been a debacle and yes there should have been more information provided via Facebook. Any Pualani Elite members reading this if you are not part of our dedicated Facebook group “Hawaiian Airlines Pualani Elite” I recommend you join us.
Not really. 830 HAL delays compared to SWA, more than 16,700 flights cancelled, 2 million passengers delayed during a major holiday is reminisicent? SWA lost track of their flight crews. threatened to fire employees for calling in sick, and why? Because SWA’s antiquated systems do not support their operations properly and haven’t for a long time as they did not want to invest the money to upgrade. Why did 830 Hawaiian flights get delayed? Because Hawaiian IS upgrading their passenger system for the future playing the long game to support the future (and did not do it during a major holiday) and serve their passengers better going forward. Hawaiian invested in this specifically to avoid a meltdown in the future like Southwest.
Another data point in the technology issued mentioned in the article was SWA’s April firewall issue, where they had to ask the FAA to put a ground stop to all of their flights, delaying 1,820 flights that day. I doubt the DOT will ask HAL about their issues as they were somewhat foreseen for good reason. As everyone, customers included, rely on technology it also makes everyone susceptible to its failures, and changing over systems is no small feat. I flew from Maui to Honolulu Thursday, it was slightly delayed, however they had folks from the company in purple t-shirts who came out and volunteered to help get through the check-in…I have never seen that from another airline. I am sure they will get through it and be better for it.
Btw, as you said, apples and oranges comparing to SWA. HA was a one time upgrade to the ticketing process that was handled poorly. Good thing it’s done though. SWA is a system wide failure of the technology required to run an airline , operations, crew scheduling etc. They cut corners to save money and the issue is far from behind them. SWA’s issue is a ticking time bomb that can surface at any time unexpectedly. Their business model of being cheap has bit them and raises questions about what else are they cutting corners on
Hi John.
We concur about the distinct differences in what happened. The similarities we see are that airlines are much more vulnerable than we expect or hope for and how just how bad it can go so wrong when something does occur.
Aloha.
Yes, it’s a bit scary how easily meltdowns can happen and just how dependent on the internet we have become……I get a sinking feeling if I misplace my cell phone for 10 mins!
As good as Hawaiian is they sure dropped the ball this time. My theory?…..it’s a very common thing in all the Hawaii business community, not just HA. Different departments are poor at communicating to each other. In Hawaii people like to “protect” their serfdoms and this results in poor intra-department communication….sounds like a case of that to me. Could have been handled much better however the website appears great now and a needed upgrade is in place.
On Sunday the 16th the old website was having multiple problems related to
flight from PDX to LIH via OCG on the 18th.
1. Our confirmation code was not recognized.
2.Then when I used our ticket #, the website said our reservations were cancelled.
3. On Monday morning the 17th, we were able to check in via the website
although it took 3 attempts.
I agree with the poster who said a fairly high corporate official decided to save money by reducing the amount testing.
Truly unfortunate!
Being that Hawaiian’s customer service is abysmal, it’s unlikely there will be compensation for all those affected.
I received an email from Hawaiian on April 5th that said they were going to implement the software update, and starting April 18th a lot of things would not be available. Most of the issues you have mentioned in your posts were addressed in the email. That said, the implementation was still a dumpster fire.
Aloha, thank goodness I’m not flying anywhere right now, but it just seems odd that such a snafu would happen after such a transfer to Amadeus by other airlines has been done before. Could this possibly be happening due to nefarious actions by outside actors? We do live in dangerous times with some very cyber savvy nations?
Hi Kauaidoug.
We wondered the same thing, actually. Not so much about a nation, but individuals, perhaps.
Aloha.
We flew from OGG to HNL on Friday for our connecting flight to SLC and got caught up in this mess.
Not only couldn’t we check in on Hawaiian, we couldn’t get boarding passes for our ongoing Delta flight.
We arrived at OGG way earlier than we normally would have and once we were checked in (thanks Corey) found that our flight was delayed by over an hour.
It made for a stressful afternoon, especially with Hawaiian’s always fun gate roulette, but it all worked out in the end.
The Hawaiian staff went out of their way to communicate and be helpful.
Scheduled to leave Maui on 4/20- could not check in online 24 hrs prior, our confirmation code was invalidated by this system issue & we couldn’t reach HA by phone which prompted us to get to the airport 4+ hrs early & good thing we did! Waited in line at baggage counter as we were not able to check in at the kiosk. The baggage counter person attempted to help us but was unable to and told us (after 45 minutes) to go to the gate. At the gate we waited another hour+, eventually able to check in and get seat assignments( a middle seat, not the seats that we had originally). This entire experience was a waste of time and very anxiety inducing. It’s Alaska Airlines for us on any future Hawaii trips. No more HA, never again.
The fiasco doesn’t give us much confidence in HA’s IT team or Amadeus. Sure hope that those affected by this get some good compensation (i.e. $400 flight credit etc.)
Simple 3-step solution,
1. Hawaiian must reimburse all travelers 100% for flights and vacation costs plus $10,000 compensation per traveler.
2. Hawaiian should be subject to congressional hearings and fines up to 100 million per day,
3. Ceo of Hawaiian, Ingram, should be publicly ridiculed and forced to wear an “I LUV Southwest T-Shirt” in all future public appearances.
Mahalo Nui Loa Beat of Hawaii for being the, explanatory calm amidst the storm.
We had Ohana coming home to Maui on Friday, after a 12 hour debacle of seat confusion and delayed flights, all good now.
Hoping that Hawai’ian Airlines will settle in and become our mighty bellwether it’s always been for the fine residents of our beautiful home in the ocean.
We’re so blessed to have such an amazing home State of Aloha. I believe we’re only going up from here forward.
I want to thank you Rob and Jeff for always being there and watching out for our Ohana and visitors. We’re so blessed to have you be our light in the darkness and first with the freshest information on all things Hawai’i.
Stay safe and blessed.
Aloha always 🌺
Hi Pam.
Thank you!! We’re glad to hear your family finally made it home to Maui!
Aloha.
Well, going from Sabre to Amadeus is complex. I’ve worked directly with both companies many times, and Sabre used to be spectacular, but then it got sold and all the development moved offshore to companies that weren’t really committed to innovation. (I met their dev teams, and even with good devs, if a company doesn’t care it doesn’t care.) At Amadeus, on the other hand, their devs try to innovate and drive development. Corporate culture matters. But it looks like Hawaiian dropped the ball, and failed to take the time to test their rollout. It is very expensive and time consuming to do – so management will always want to reduce costs. Someone there should definitely be fired – they’ll probably scapegoat the tech guy and keep the bad exec.
I agree 100% Tony! I worked in administration for a university and can attest to taking advantage of training being THE most important factor in a massive project like a total software changeover. There is no logic in taking shortcuts when it’s a mission-critical project, and when it’s done simply to save money, failure must result in firing the one(s) who made the decision to go cheap. You can have two of these three things when it comes to projects, but you can never have all three at the same time: good, fast, cheap. Pro tip – always choose good and fast! You’ll have to pay the lady, but you won’t have have debacles like this one.
I thought the same thing…did anyone QA this before pushing “go live’? Did they not think to have a backup plan or a way to keep the lights on during a failure? Thats just mind boggling to me that something so standard in the tech-o-sphere seemed to just be completely ignored here. “Brah, you wen test em eh?” “I wen da kine, press play on da CD.” “Ok, good enough!” Sounds like the State Legislature ran this thing.
I usually start making reservations earlier than April, but things were busy around here the first 1/4 of 2023.
Looking at doing a trip to Oahu this fall, I was able to reserve my accommodations. However, when it came time to reserve my ticket…well you know what has been happening.
I see where some issues have been fixed. But after reading some of the horror stories about the system losing tickets (that’s a lot of money for a lot of people), delayed or cancelled flights, and people standing in lines for 3-5 hours to get things straightened out…I’m blessed that I did have something keeping me from getting tickets till now.
Good Luck Everybody!!!