Long Lines for Luxury: Inside Hawaiian’s Exclusive Plumeria Lounge [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Hawaiian’s Plumeria lounge is considered better (!) than their Premier lounge, and is offered to international business class customers whereas Premier is granted to domestic first. And it’s also a Priority Pass lounge. A line, though.. for this?

  • Some card issuers go beyond the requires of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (intended to help military families deal with financial stresses of active duty) by waiving credit card annual fees.

    Despite some websites offering advice to the contrary, Citibank expressly does not offer such a waiver on their premium AAdvantage credit card which comes with Admirals Club membership.

  • Southwest Airlines killing it during irrops:

  • Reminds me of the mohel in season 4, episode 10 of L.A. Law (“The Pay’s Lousy, But the Tips Are Great”) who performed a bris and said “oops.”

    Pilot made a lil oopsies
    byu/Sephc inunitedairlines

  • Wealthy residents of Naples, Florida want $1.7 billion in taxpayer money to move their airport farther away from them

  • Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof’s travel tips (NYT)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. I remember going to Hawaiian’s flagship lounge back in 2015 when I flew business-class to American Samoa. It was awful back then. It doesn’t look like any improvements have been made. Hawaiian’s overall product has always been disappointing once you get over the niche and romanticism.

  3. Most lounges these days are for the tired, poor huddled masses. The real flex at an airport has become paying for a restaurant which actually treats you like a human.

  5. What Southwest did was nothing. Fly the “premium” airline and sleeping in ATL for a few days will get you 12,500 Sky Pesos and $69 of the $1,000 spent out of pocket reimbursed.

  8. When the BK Whopper is $13, yes that’s just the burger, at the terminal., the lounge feels like a better place. Free can of beer or wine, and tuna fish sandwiches were a bit underwhelming. At least they had taro chips and macadamia nut cookies! Better than nothing like Denver!

  9. Yes Plumeria Lounge isn’t great, but free beer/wine and space to get some work done without paying the restaurant fees in the terminal make it worth it. for comparison’s sake though, outside of the ANA lounge, the majority of HNL options are pretty dismal. I don’t think the HNL UA lounge has been updated since 1989 (but they do have free dole whip!)

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