New Way To Redeem Miles For First Class Flights To Hawaii

I saw that earlier today. Was looking to see where they flew from Boston and I see tickets to Maui for surprisingly decent 20000 elevate point + a few depending on the dates which is not bad at all.

You should check what American is flying. They just started 321 service from LAX to the islands and will be fully A321 on that route in the next few months.

@paincorp - American is using regular domestic config A321's (A321H) - an Etop certified plane and albeit new birds, they are not the A321T used on the JFK to LAX and SFO with the F and J cabins.

So Virgin will still have the better product to Hawaii.

With that said, maybe AA and the others will listen and put the A321T and other newer jets over there.

I flew to HNL twice this summer and the F class experience, well it's just not!!

yay?

And if you live in the middle of the country, you can go back to sleep.

"With that said, maybe AA and the others will listen and put the A321T and other newer jets over there."

Didn't bother to read Lucky's link, did you?

https://onemileatatime.com/why-arent-there-nicer-seats-to-hawaii/

Are the mileage redemption options on Virgin Australia, Emirates, Singapore, and Hawaiian so bad it's not even worth mentioning how many miles they require and the pros and cons?

@ Larry -- I'll try to do a post with all the options, but pretty much. Singapore charges 79k one-way from the West Coast, and 137k one-way from the East Coast, for example.

Not to give you more homework but it'd be super helpful to throw in some ideas about the possibility of using these flights enroute to Asia, whether that's using SQ, UA or other miles. I've always thought that HNL would be the perfect Pacific stopover.

What's the redemption rate for coach?

Jordan: There's no demand for three cabin service on that route. United only flies the 777 since it heads down to Guam. If legacy carriers had all economy planes, they would probably fly those to Hawaii, as F is rarely filled with paid F.

321S/H are still miles ahead of what's currently on that route, and the big difference hard product wise (not including food/service) is VX's live TV, which last time I checked won't work over the Pacific Ocean.

@ Heem -- 25k from the West Coast, but space isn't nearly as good in economy.

UA actually has fully flat proper BF seats operating SFO-HNL..

@ Ivan -- Yes, but only on one flight a day, and award availability (at least at the saver level) isn't great.

I've run into a caveat:

While award availability is there on Virgin America

Apparently the availability to Virgin Atlantic members is not the same.

I called Virgin Atlantic to book a flight I saw on Virgin America to Maui, and was told that there are no award seats available. Rep said that the award availability is not always the same between the two.

So now I have a bunch of points stuck in Virgin Atlantic that I just transferred there.

Rep said only way to find out of seats become available is to keep calling back.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks

In addition to the daily 764 with lie flats, UA also has two daily 772s ex-SFO and one ex-LAX with an equivalent (though older) hard product.

Can you do award search for VX before calling Virgin Atlantic?

@ jediwho -- Nope, but they're very nice on the phone, and I don't think I've ever waited more than a few minutes on hold.

@ Usza -- Ouch, sorry to hear that! That's why I mentioned calling ahead and placing the reservation on hold. Virgin America will always show every seat as available with points, as they have a revenue-based system. A selection of seats are made available to partners for award tickets.

That said, have you tried a day before or after, or maybe a flight into Honolulu?

Will there be outlandish fuel surcharges like there are when redeeming on Virgin Atlantic metal?

Whoops - just re-read and see there are no fuel surcharges. It's a lot of miles for me (DC based) but at least that's good.

What about the Virgin America card and redeeming directly? Is that worthwhile?

@ keith -- Maybe if you found a screaming deal, but keep in mind Virgin America Elevate is a revenue-based program. A first class flight that is $999 dollars one-way (the price of a random SFO-HNL next March, though I wouldn't expect that to always be the price), would require 48,781 Elevate points. A fixed 75k Virgin Atlantic miles round-trip is almost certainly going to be the better value in most cases.