Hawaii Flights Usually Don’t Have the Quality Product That the Distance Might Suggest

Flying to Hawaii from the East Coast takes longer than flying to most destinations in Europe. And yet with few exceptions airlines do not offer their premium long haul seats to Hawaii.

Los Angeles – New York JFK may be a five hour flight, but airlines scramble to give forward cabin customers lie flat beds. That’s just not the case with Hawaii.

While there’s some demand for paid seats upfront, much of which either by wealthy vacationers or honeymooners, Hawaii service doesn’t have the same density of business travel that many other markets do. It’s a disproportionately leisure-oriented destination.

And that also means that – though elites will fly there on vacation – the flying tends not to be all that elite-heavy either. So airlines offering complimentary upgrades to Hawaii find the fulfilment rate of those upgrades reasonably high.

I used to recommend the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa as the best way to get to Hawaii in a premium cabin — buying one first class ticket and using the $99+tax (formerly $50+tax) compoanion ticket for the second first class seat. Unfortunately those certificates can no longer be used for paid first class travel.

That was my strategy myself to fly to Maui once, and it meant to paid first class tickets (refundable, with attendant mileage bonuses) for less than the cost of buying two coach tickets. But it also meant flying Alaska’s 737s — I find their seats relatively uncomfortable for a transcon flight like DC – Seattle. Doing back-to-back transcons since Seattle – Hawaii is about the same distance wasn’t the best.

Some “Better” Seats to Hawaii Do Exist

United, Delta, and American all offer better seating on at least some of their flights to Hawaii.

United probably has the best product on its two-cabin internationally configured 767s to Hawaii from Newark, Washington Dulles, and Houston. They don’t allow complimentary elite upgrades on those, though. (There’s no better use of Regional Premier Upgrades.)

Some of American’s flights are operated by international aircraft featuring their old angled international business class seats. That’s much better than the domestic first product on their 737s and MD80s, but doesn’t compare to United’s lie flat business class seat. American doesn’t restrict upgrades on these aircraft, though. And their 767s, which I flew Dallas – Maui and Maui – Los Angeles, have 30 seats up front.

American Has an Upgraded Meal Service on These Flights

I don’t know why I love ice cream sundaes on domestic flights so much. I can certainly get ice cream at home, in my favorite flavors and from my favorite brands. If I make a sundae it’s going to be with better ice cream. And yet there’s something special about the dessert cart coming down the aisle and having a sundae made up for me to enjoy as I settle in to watch a movie.

But we’ll get to the sundaes in a moment.

Here’s the menu from my Dallas – Maui outbound:

I pre-ordered the steak because I just do not want anymore ravioli or studfed shells on an American flight. The meals aren’t bad but they just seem to always be one of the choices on my flights. And it’s clearly not just me: someone recently tweeted to me that their body had recently become 5% stuffed shells.

A fairly substantial salad was served first, along with dinner rolls. What I found most interesting was that instead of a packet of butter, there was salted honey butter that was quite good.

The steak I might have passed on except that I was hungry and it was a long flight ahead, so it was good enough.

The ice cream sundae? That will never yield a complaint.

A flight that clocks in a few minutes shy of 8 hours calls for at least a snack prior to arrival. In this case it wasn’t substantial, it was just fruit and cheese but it did the trick.

The menu on my return called for chicken or.. tortellini. So I pre-ordered the chicken.

Again a salad, entree, and ice cream.

My only real complaint about the meals, or what confused me the most, was that on both flights even though there were two courses which called for use of a fork, the table setting included only a single fork. They do more than that on short haul flights that are done as single tray service, so I don’t understand the decision.

Amenities and Little Extras to and from Hawaii

American’s 767s have the old cigarette lighter-style power ports that require adapters. There’s no inflight internet. Fortunately for a flight like Dallas – Maui that’s longer than my laptop battery I carry an external battery that will charge both my laptop and phone.

There’s no inflight entertainment at your seat on the 767s, there’s shared screens in the cabin. But for Dallas – Maui they give you a tablet loaded with entertainment options, which they plug into the power port at your seat.

No amenity kits or anything of the sort that you might get on a flight of a similar distance such as Miami – Sao Paolo.

But you do get upgraded nuts. Seriously, the nut mix they use on Hawaiian flights is great, with candied pineapple and brown sugar-crusted pecans. I wish American would either use these or the Marcus Samuelsson spiced nut mix offered as buy on board in economy in first class on regular domestic flights.

There’s No Extra Service on the Ground

Alaska Airlines gives lounge access to passengers in first class that didn’t get there via upgrades. But as a general matter domestic premium cabin ravel doesn’t come with lounge access, or any special treatment on the ground other than priority check-in, security, and boarding. And in Maui, don’t even expect the priority security part.

I used the Admirals Club in Dallas, something I have access to several different ways but generally present my British Airways Gold card because that not only gets me into the lounge but also means they give me premium drink chits.

The only lounge in the Maui airport is the Hawaiian Airlines offering, which you can access via a code (not given out to American’s passengers, rather just describing the procedure for access) but that isn’t much worth using.

There’s no premium security line, and when I went through one of the two checkpoints was closed. So enough time was spent in the security line that I didn’t have that much time to kill airside in any case. (There was also only one TSA document checker who could read an electronic boarding pass, so another brief wait.)

Fortunately I wasn’t checking bags, or else I would have had to run those through agriculture inspection prior to bringing them to the airline counter (there’s another agriculture inspection for carry on bags after security — the process of leaving Hawaii isn’t a fast one.. leave plenty of time, I would arrive at rental car return no later than 90 minutes prior to departure without checked bags, earlier with luggage to check).

Ultimately I find American’s old style international angled business class seats fine for an 8 hour flight, but I wouldn’t want to fly greater distances in them which is why I’m excited for the new business class they’re bringing into the fleet – but that I don’t expect to see making Hawaii runs.

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