Amid Hawaii’s travel storm sits latecomer Southwest Airlines. A look at the pros and cons of their curious presence in Hawaii.
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63 thoughts on “Southwest Airlines: Good Or Bad For Hawaii?”
Amid Hawaii’s travel storm sits latecomer Southwest Airlines. A look at the pros and cons of their curious presence in Hawaii.
Southwest is Great for Hawaii keeps Hawaiian airlines
From over charging for a 45 mins island hop.
I agree that Hawaii tourism is unmanageable. For both residents/businesses and the tourists themselves. I’m not sure it’s legal but maybe a limit on daily visitors to Hawaii rather than the unlimited amount only limited by number of seats and flights. This would benefit the tourist in that they wouldn’t have to be fighting others for seats at a restaurant or seats on a boat or having to make reservations a year in advance. Then perhaps the locals would not have such negative feelings toward tourists because they’ve been overrun by them.
Yah just like disneyland. They limit the number of visiters they have a capcity.
I have been to Hawaii many times, & yes it was expensive, but now it is super expensive. But the grocery prices are out of control. I am spending 32 days here, I don’t think I’ll be back. There are other places where my money will go further. Sorry, but you have priced regular people out of this market.
Southwest Airlines has two incredible things going for it! The first one is that you can cancel at the last minute and with Covid and all the other stuff going on that’s important for my family. Secondly, you get two free bags which we can load up with souvenirs bought with all that money we’ve saved! Thank you BOH for all of the information you provided all of us!
To heck with Hawaiian Air, I’ll fly Southwest over Hawaiian all day long. Hawaiian has used inter-island fees to pad their other flights and have ripped off the state residence for a long time.
My trick to flying on SWA to Hawaii is to have one person book all those going. We have a family of six so by doing that we all fly on one confirmation number. When confirming 24hrs before departure we get assigned our six positions together. IE: A 16 thru 22. It has worked for the last eight times leaving out of Vegas.
My wife and I are older and have no interest in unassigned seating
so we will never fly SW. We are long time loyal HA customers.
Competitive capitalism is a mixed bag both good and bad.
Right now there are short term benefits which may later become long term negatives.
A decade or more ago, my wife wanted to go to Kauai. We looked at all of the options and schedules, but we would have had to change planes at HNL. Hawaiian wanted as much to go from HNL to Kauai as they did to go to HNL from the west coast.
I Love Hawaiian. Great service. However, they brought this on themselves. I don’t feel sorry for them. Now, they need to adjust how they do business to keep up with the competition. This keeps things fresh for the consumer. Offer a better product at a competitive price and the consumer will choose you. Southwest offers free checked bags, while Hawaiian, Alaska, all the others, have their hand out. I’m retired. Pinching pennies is my new job. I don’t think I’m alone in that.
Competition and lower prices are good.
I will never again fly SW Airlines. They cancel flights with zero warning, nor rhyme nor reason (threatened pilot strike… Not stated… My K.C. to PHX planned trip 2021), lately the Mauna Loa eruption which affected nothing in Hilo’s airspace and other airlines continued on… Most recently their Christmas 2022 fiasco). SWA is a cattle-car / folks fighting for every seat. I want to choose my own seat in advance, Thanks.
Now SWA seems to want to drive others (HAL) into bankruptcy, like Mesa airlines (aka Go Airlines) did to Aloha Airlines… making HAL lose $100 Million last year.