Important food for thought before buying flights to Hawaii. Safety and comfort are real concerns, as is reliability. The winners and losers surprised us. What about you?
Important food for thought before buying flights to Hawaii. Safety and comfort are real concerns, as is reliability. The winners and losers surprised us. What about you?
Some airlines only have one type of aircraft while there some with multiple air craft type seating unfair to compare seating this wayl
Well so much for the “Southwest Effect” of them having the lowest fares and bring all the extra people over. 😉
We fly American from PHX because it is nonstop to Kauai. We have never had an issue with them. We fly Hawaiian home because they have better times than the other airlines. We hate red eye flights and used to be able to fly nonstop home. Those flights are hard to find and super expensive now. So, for us it is about flight times that work.
I thoroughly enjoy flying AA premium economy to hnl. I prefer over Delta. Jmo.
Why limit this study to US based airlines? I assume there is a significant travel component from Canada. This is a classic American “the world ends at the 49th parallel” perspective. BOH is better than this… or so I thought.
Based on what I read here, the source data did not include non-US carriers, so the authors of this post could not include them. We can debate how pervasive and unattractive the ‘Murica First! attitude is (too pervasive, downright ugly), but it doesn’t seem to apply in this case.
Interesting years ago united airlines was the only airline the flew to Hawaii
Things sure have changed.
United is one of the original US carriers to serve Hawaii. Northwest and PanAm were also pioneers in Hawaii service. PanAm was the first airline with flying boats that actually landed at Pearl Harbor before the airport was built.
Very little validity to this “study’s” conclusions. As always, one must read the fine print under the “methodology” section. Airlines with older aircraft get penalized due to safety concerns? Tell that to the crash victims of the new 737MAX a few years ago. Cheaper fare airlines get more points? For a flight to HI from California the difference between top and lowest score was only $48. Injuries on flights lower the score? Most injuries are from turbulence which is totally unpredictable by the crew and for which seatbelts are the solution. This “study” is weak.
Very true Elmo, Also odd…Hawaiian is the oldest US carrier (1929) and has never had a fatal accident…..Alaska has had many over the years. SWA has actually had very few, albeit a handful of fatalities but never an entire plane load. They have had a lot of incidents….overruns and ground collisions from their save time mantra so perhaps that is why their score is so low? Not sure about their methodology.
None of this surprises me. I’m a long time Delta flyer for a reason, and I fly a lot for business, and I always fly Delta to Hawaii. A big part of that is because of my business travel I have status on Delta, and I have a lot of points as well so I am able to upgrade to Comfort+ or First Class every time. My biggest complaint about Delta is that they don’t have a lot of flights in general, and even fewer direct flights to Kona. They do have a deal with Hawaiian, so I can book a flight on Hawaiian through Delta and get all of my perks. However, if I do have to stop in Honolulu I can’t pick seats when I switch to the interisland flight. That’s a Pity, so I try to stick to the Delta flights.
And speaking of Delta, how are you liking their constant award increases and the shrinking value of their Sky Pesos?
The problem is that they have the best clubs and everyone and his brother wants to get in them so they are over crowded. So Delta is making it more difficult to get in to try and address the overcrowding. Personally, I’m good with that since I’ve been a member clean back to when it was something that only Delta’s most loyal customers had access to and I would be happy to see it return to that.
The problem with Delta is they continue to devalue their award program with no notice and now their Sky Pesos are about worth half (if that) then they were just a few years ago. Did you remember how many times they raised the cost of an award between now and before the pandemic? 3 times?
A good airline but if you are flying them to earn miles and redeem them, I’d look at another award program.
Need to factor in the best Frequent Flyer programs, cancellation policy, # flights, etc. Many choose the airline where they have status and points on the airline loyal program as a major factor.
Mike, exactly. And the way frequent flyer programs reward different groups of flyers. For example, Hawaiian Miles offers good value for tourists and local commute type people but has long underperformed for actual frequent Hawaii flyers. (For starters, they offer decent mileage credit, but very limited upgrades to first class cabins (coupons) which many of us longtime Platinums find really hard to use.) Alaska has a better program here.
This is a test volunteer.