Open seating ended on a Hawaii red-eye flight that left Honolulu late on January 26 and arrived in Los Angeles the next morning. The first assigned-seat Hawaii flight soon followed, departing Kauai for Honolulu. Hawaii ended up being both the end and the beginning of some of the most visible changes made in decades, even if many travelers have yet to notice.
Southwest framed the shift as transformational. The airline’s stock jumped nearly 15% last week after it projected a fourfold earnings increase in 2026. On paper, it’s all good.
What Hawaii travelers experienced wasn’t just one shift but rather a multitude of changes that arrived all at once. Interisland frequencies remain cut back. Some mainland-to-Hawaii routes were previously reduced or disappeared entirely. Bags that had always been free without question suddenly came with a cost, and seat choice became something you either paid up for or planned around. Rapid Rewards points that many used for trips now require more of them.
Loyalty just got rebuilt around fees.
The Rapid Rewards devaluation did not come out of nowhere. It showed up at the same moment bags stopped being free, and seat choice started costing extra.
For years, Southwest loyalty just worked. You earned points, you booked a flight, and that was that. Seats were open, bags were included, and loyalty paid off when you redeemed points and got to Hawaii without having to think too hard about it.
For Hawaii travelers, the changes are not subtle. A free checked bag does not offset a redemption that now requires far more points than it used to, and a slightly better seat does not replace the value of a full flight booked on points. The tradeoff shifted, and it shifted against anyone who relied on loyalty to make Hawaii trips pencil out.
That is why points started buying less at the same time that bags and seats started costing more. The old bargain was built around getting you to Hawaii. The new one is built around charging you as you go.
Hawaii travelers feel the impact firsthand.
Hawaii redemptions have always required more points than most mainland flights because of distance and cost. When point values drop, that hits Hawaii travelers hard.
The same applies to bags and seats. Hawaii trips are longer, with more luggage, and less forgiving when something goes wrong. What used to be built-in flexibility also now requires extra planning or extra money, and that shift changes how people approach the entire Hawaii vacation. For travelers who chose Southwest specifically to avoid nickel-and-diming, the experience no longer feels clearly different from other airlines.
Travelers became loyal to Southwest in Hawaii because the tradeoff made sense and stayed consistent over time. The airline was not luxurious, but it was predictable, flexible, and fair, and that mattered more than any polish. What Hawaii travelers are grappling with now is not any single fee or policy change, but the realization that the underlying bargain they trusted has been rewritten.
The Southwest Hawaii footprint shrank and grew simultaneously.
While Southwest was talking up its transformation, its Hawaii schedule had already moved in the opposite direction. Interisland flying had been reduced by as much as 30% on some routes, reducing options that regular travelers here rely on. Mainland flights, too, were trimmed back or eliminated, leaving fewer backups when plans changed or flights got full.
At the same time, Southwest just announced its first new Hawaii gateways in years. Ontario to Honolulu will launch daily service beginning in June, and Burbank to Honolulu will follow on peak days later this summer. Burbank has not seen nonstop Hawaii service in more than two decades, and Southwest is clearly positioning itself to compete aggressively in Southern California as new airport facilities come online.
Expansion for new customers, pullback for existing ones.
Southwest’s new Hawaii routes from Ontario and Burbank should attract travelers who never had easy access to Hawaii flights without going through LAX or another airport. For those Hawaii-bound travelers, the expansion is progress, and the transformation narrative largely rings true. Yet for long-time Hawaii travelers, the picture looks very different. They are dealing with fewer choices, much higher out-of-pocket costs, and a loyalty program that no longer delivers what it once did.
What changed was the relationship, not just the product.
Southwest can argue that it is offering more choice. You can pay for a better seat, pay to keep your bags free, and pay to recreate an experience that used to come standard.
Yet it feels like the relationship shifted underneath Southwest Hawaii loyalists. The airline hasn’t just tweaked a few features or tightened things around the edges. It corrected the whole deal in its own favor.
Flight 1791, leaving Honolulu, didn’t just mark the end of open seating. It marked the point where many Hawaii travelers realized the airline they had become loyal to was no longer the same one it had been. The question is whether the new version of Southwest Hawaii still works for those travelers who helped make its latest Hawaii expansion possible.
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