Updated 6/20/23. Today we heard from Southwest, and they said, in essence, not so fast. There has been a change of plans for next week’s rollout of flights with overnight connections that will lead to true red-eye flights from Hawaii. This is something many visitors are clamoring for.
Just to say, for those willing and able, an overnight flight will typically extend your vacation by an average of 15% compared with flying back early in the morning. Not only that, but you save one night’s hotel charges, which in Hawaii, well, you get the idea.
Southwest’s Dan Landson told us, “While this was the original date we were planning to offer this service, the work has been delayed slightly and now we’re planning to offer overnight connections as early as later this summer (no firm date at the moment).”
Starting within days sometime soon, Southwest Airlines will make a change that’s been long awaited in Hawaii. Details are forthcoming, but for now, the airline says that this is coming to Hawaii flights. The next updated schedule from Southwest Airlines is due out on June 29, 2023, which should more fully reflect will not yet reflect these changes. So please check back soon when we will have all the details. However, Southwest’s next update will offer flights for sale through March 6, 2024.
New overnight connections lead to overnight Southwest Hawaii flights.
Other airlines’ Hawaii flights include overnight connections and overnight flight options. Those are very popular since they, in essence, extend Hawaii vacations for an additional day. Southwest has been the only airline flying to Hawaii that doesn’t include overnight flights whatsoever.
The airline committed and confirmed to Beat of Hawaii years ago that they would provide both overnight connections and overnight flights and now there’s finally a tangible move in that direction. After that, we await flights that leave in the late evening from Hawaii and arrive on the mainland in the morning.
Previously Southwest had technology issues that prevented these offerings. But while they have been technically able to offer these flights for some time, they have just now decided to start doing so. Hawaii to mainland overnight flights are a high priority for Southwest. The question remains as to how Southwest will add those flights, given that they continue to be plagued by pilot shortages that are likely to go on for the foreseeable future.
First up on the overnight connections offered will be from Honolulu to Houston. A first-time-ever option will be to depart Honolulu at 3:00 pm and arrive in Oakland at 11:16 pm. The connecting flight will depart Oakland at 5:05 am and arrive in Houston at 10:45 am. In the past, two tickets would have been required for each segment when flying overnight. Now both flights can be purchased as one ticket.
Unaccompanied minors will not be permitted on these overnight connections. These new overnight connections will be offered starting on June 26.
Southwest Hawaii cuts seasonal flights later this summer.
Southwest last year started seasonal-only routes to and from Hawaii. That isn’t unusual for them or other airlines. As we previously announced, starting right after Labor Day, on September 5, 2023, Southwest will remove the routes below from their schedule. We do expect them to return in spring 2024, as they did earlier this year. While these are very popular routes, they are also overserved by every airline except one flying to Hawaii, and that’s Alaska Airlines. The competing airlines on these routes are American, Delta, Hawaiian, and United Airlines. That could be one reason for the seasonality.
1. Los Angeles to Kauai. This is an extremely popular route, as are all the routes between Los Angeles and Hawaii. Passengers on Southwest will need to change planes in Honolulu or the US mainland while the route is missing.
2. Los Angeles to Kona. As with the Los Angeles to Kauai route, passengers must change planes when flying Southwest on this route.
When Southwest reduces nonstop Hawaii flights, they prioritize moving passengers on the mainland to other nonstop Hawaii flights rather than using their interisland flights. That may still prognosticate future reductions in Southwest interisland flights, which, given they are still selling flights for $44, would not surprise us. — Beat of Hawaii.
Other Southwest Hawaii routes previously chopped.
The routes below were cut previously, and they now appear to be gone permanently:
Phoenix to Kauai/Kona. Southwest discontinued these popular routes, both to Kona and Kauai. Travelers from Phoenix need to change flights either on the mainland or in Hawaii. Both of those options are offered on the Southwest website. The only remaining nonstop option on those routes is American Airlines, and there may not be enough traffic to warrant competition.
San Diego to Kauai/Kona routes stopped. Nonstop service between San Diego and both Lihue and Kona also ceased operating. As with Phoenix, passengers traveling from San Diego require connecting flights on either the mainland or another island. Nonstop flights are available on Alaska Airlines to both Hawaii airports.
Get Breaking Hawaii Travel News
When will Southwest offer more overnight flights from HNL to the mainland in June? It is January and the one overnight flight HNL on Saturday 8 June is sold out.
So they don’t offer redeye flights, they have just figured out how to use their booking system to connect a flight one day to a flight the next day? This isn’t a ground breaking technological event, maybe for SWA it is though. Thank goodness their planes don’t have the range to fly across the international date line if they just now figured out how to connect two flights over night. I have used them many times for mainland to mainland travel, they are usually late, especially in the later part of the day, but convenient for that kind of travel in general, but they offer no code share, and long range flights are horrible with them in my experience.
You’re saying pilot shortages are the reason SWA can’t do red eyes from Hawaii to mainland when all the other carriers have been doing this since the prop age? Or is it more their ancient technology.
BoH – Thanks for the news on SW overnight flights. Southwest’s idea of HNL – Houston includes an almost 6 hour layover in Oakland ? Methinks they need replanning.
Hi Dan.
Thanks for that – you aren’t the first person to mention it. We had a 3.5 hour layover in Las Vegas with them last week from Hawaii to the southeast. And that was definitely long enough even though it was during the day.
Southwest is definitely seeing this so we’d consider your comment as valuable input back to them.
Aloha.
thanks for info
Overnight flights from Hawaii are not my favourite – as much as I love extending our time in Hawaii. Although I’m excited to finally get a direct flight to Kona from Calgary (Westjet) for our trip next Spring. The direct afternoon flights back from Maui were perfect.
Interesting news piece on Hawaii News Now yesterday concerning the proliferation of bargain tourists caused by essentially the “SWA Effect” Their super cheap intro fares are creating super cheap tourists that are hurting the Hawaii economy. I was surprised how widespread the concern is and real the damage they do was outlined. Don’t shoot the messenger…..
This flight to OAK is not a new one. Many times during the pandemic I would fly HNL to OAK and arrive around midnight. I would then spend the night in the airport and catch my flight to MDW at 0500. It was just me and I could not justify the hotel expense for 3 hours. I did have to book it as 2 separate flights as SW did not show any available flights from HNL to MDW. It must be because of the long layover and the 2 different dates for flights.
Hi Chris.
That flight isn’t new at all. The one ticket straight through is definitely new as of whatever date SW now decides to begin it. It should also equate to better pricing for those routes. Last week when flying from Hawaii to Nashville, the 1-ticket price was over $200 less than the 2-ticket price.
Aloha.
Aloha.
When you said you flew to the southeast last week in your earlier comment, I wondered where you’d flown to – was this your first trip to Nashville? I live about 45 minutes east of BNA and fly from there to Maui to visit our daughter and son-in-law! Southwest flights connecting through Las Vegas have the shortest duration and are the best for us price-wise. I prefer Alaska Airlines via Seattle because it’s two 5-hour legs and I like that airport, but the price is prohibitive unless there’s a great sale. Nice to hear you were in our neck of the woods, hope you enjoyed it (although Nashville is crazy now; as a middle Tennessee native I definitely miss the old Nashville).
Hi Kim.
Thanks for asking. No this wasn’t a first visit to Nashville, and it was for business meetings primarily. The CMA Fest was in process which was great fun! Consider Jeff to be a country western fan now. Yes we went on Southwest and returned on Delta, as you said. We have upcoming reviews on the Hawaii legs of both airlines, and suffice to say it didn’t all go quite as we’d expected.
Aloha.
I didn’t see a single example of a redeye flight. I saw examples of flights on one day connecting to flights on the next day. A true redeye flight would be one that actually starts very late at night or very early in the morning. “Late” means after 10 p.m. and “early” before or 3 a.m.
Hi David.
There are no redeyes yet (as we hope we clearly indicated). The next step is the overnight connection that will in turn lead to the long awaited Hawaii redeyes.
Aloha.
I guess SWA has to start overnight somewhere, but I can’t think of a worse airport than OAK for a 6 hour layover in the middle of the night. Being stuck there with no services (food/drink) for 6 hours doesn’t really sound like a selling point.
It’s great to hear SWA is adding overnight flights back to their schedule. Two weeks ago, on my return from Maui, I flew from OGG to LAX enroute to my final destination, RIC. Apparently LAX closes (Who knew!), so once my flight arrived after 11pm, i had to collect my luggage from SWA, find a place to nap, then recheck my luggage at 4am when the airport reopened! My Southwest flights were wonderful, but the experience sitting in a closed LAX was definitely not!
Aloha BOH!
Thank you for keeping us informed about Hawaii travel news, updates and current events on the islands!
I’ve been a reader for almost 10 Years, so Thank You, Thank You and keep up the great work!!
Hi Lisa.
Thanks very much! Are you still based in Texas, and if so do you use the nonstop flights from Austin? The price on those will drop by almost half to under $450 RT starting in August.
Aloha.
I live in Virginia now, just north of Richmond (RIC). IAD and DCA are a bit further (2-3 hours away depending on traffic in northern Va).
WOW,$450 RT is a great deal! Thanks for the info. I’ll pass it along to my friends back in Texas.
Ya’ll take care!
Mahalo
Hi Lisa.
Good to know. We’ll keep an eye out for those deals, although they are fewer as you know.
Aloha!
I like that SWA will be offering overnight flights from Hawaii to the mainland. Last year, I traveled round trip on Delta from Sacramento to Kauai. When I returned home, my flight departed Kauai at 9 PM, with a connection in Los Angeles to Sacramento. This gave me an extra day in Kauai at the end of my trip!
As a resident of Hawaii for 41 years, I’ve learned to hate overnight flights to the mainland = the Zombie effect upon arrival, taking days to get over jetlag. Since United Airlines recently stopped all service in & out of Hilo, as a Big Island resident, in order to avoid those horrible plane changes in Honolulu or Maui, if we want direct [nonstop] flights to the mainland, we are all forced to fly in & out of Kona. That’s very inconvenient, since most Big Island residents live 90-120 minutes away from Kona Airport. SouthWest Airlines is not my favorite (aka cattle-car airlines) but they are (were?) the only nonstops Kona–LasVegas–Kona, so I ‘bit the bullet’ and booked that last week during the SWA sale. Hope it’s not cancelled.
I hope they bring most back for spring.
Sorry but the arrival at 11:16 pm and departures at 5:05 am is not what I’d think of as a red-eye. In previous days, there were flights leaving around 10-11 pm with LAX arrival around 5 am. Many connections would have been around 7 am – That is a red-eye. A 5 hour layover is poor scheduling and undesirable in my book. Bottom of the barrel choice.
Hi Kathie.
That is not a redeye. That is an overnight connection.
Aloha.
Why would anyone do that, it’s terrible. Definitely not for families with kids!
Exactly. And add the expense of a hotel and time of airport to hotel and hotel back to airport and Uber if free hotel shuttle does not run that early, it sucks in all ways. Trust me, I just booked a similar flight on another airline, it stinks. SWA CN do better, right?
Not all itineraries are meant for everyone. In fact, some itineraries are meant for a very limited number of potential customers; this is one of those cases. Believe it or not some people will see value in this. Eventually true red-eyes will come to Southwest
It’s still inconvenient. Who wants to sit in the Oakland Airport for 5 to 6 hours. Nothing will be open and, it’s Oakland. No thanks! More bad Southwest scheduling.
Can’t stand red eye Flights as too old for these nowadays and there is way too many younger party animals on board noisily celebrating the whole flight to the West Coast that continue on connecting flights to the Midwest or East Coast.
Totally Agree !
Too expensive and overcrowded to visit Hawaii (the state). Less flights will help.
As much as I love SW, I will continue to flight Alaska as they offer Nonstop SAN to KOA and LIH. Both which were cut last year by SW. if I can fly direct, I will so that I have more island time….
You won’t see me on any red eyes on southwest.
Aloha, just back from two weeks on Maui! We flew Southwest and I must say the nicest flights I’ve taken ever!! We were told that they are refurbishing the seating to include charging stations and monitors on seat backs! Some next year we were told by a Flight attendant! Truly a seemless flight home to arrive at 5:30 in San Jose Non stop. Overnight flights will be welcomed because we missed an entire day and a days rent on condo! Our Bad!
Thanks for your info!
Tim S.