Redeeming Miles To Hawaii Can Be Tough

Very thorough post, however, maybe with the exception of Virgin America, all first class product to Hawaii is borderline terrible so I wouldn't go out of my way to book a first class ticket.

Whats the deal with forum lately? Seem to go up and down all the time?
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Very well written and informative. Really insightful to see how your go through the process of tackling this itinerary. Keep up the great work!

I'm trying to do my own sleuthing to help -- here's a question. Does anyone know how Delta fare codes their awards, and what a saver level award is coded as for domestic first? I'm trying to search on Delta's website to see if saver award space exists, then leverage miles with a SkyTeam partner...

@Luis: Delta does offer flat-bed service nonstop from ATL-HNL on an A333...but booking it at a reasonable award level is another issue.

When did United stop flying to LIH from SFO and LAX??

We go through this every year. Our daughter lives in Hawaii. We have 3 people to fly to see her. We like to switch around our islands. We always visit 2 during our visits. And sometime we base our islands on where the award seats are.

Since we are in Texas a lot of times that means a stop over on the west coast. I have had a terrible time finding seats from Texas...economy or first class. So we will sometimes fly to west coast in coach...and then upgrade to first class from west coast over. That being said we find that there is no first class product worth it to go to and from Kauai! So now we save our miles and always go coach to Kauai.

But we always have a hard time finding award seats to Kauai!!! Just keep checking!!

@Tiffany
Very thoughtful write up, and kind of you to empathize with our (probably infuriated) friend, CLH. I too am looking for specific dates to OGG next July, and award availability is a drag.

I agree with @Luis about the domestic F seats, but the thought of coach for 10+ hours each way sounds like a terrible start and finish to our vacation. I guess that's what happens when flying from DC to Hawaii. It makes the hop to Europe seem quick!

We're also considering using our SW Companion Pass to position to the west coast before using avios, but that would seriously make for a 12 hour travel day with at least a couple stops. If only there were saver award space on that EWR-HNL UA 767.... 120k SQ miles would be the bargain of the century...

A guy can dream, eh?

@ Dave -- That's sweet of you! Domestic first should be R, or O for the premium transcons. If you see two letters together (i.e. RL) then it's not at the lowest level.

@ No Name -- I know, and it's super super super annoying. The tech team is working on a fix, but they haven't been able to explain to me why this is happening, so not sure when it will be working consistently again.

Wow!!! That is a very well written report. Congrats!!! I took my family of 4 to Hawaii in the last 2 summers and was lucky to be able to book 3 award tickets for wife and kids on Premium Economy using Delta miles at a very reasonable redemption. I usually pay for my ticket anyway so I can get more miles so Hawaii has been a very good destination for me to put my Sky Pesos for a good use.

A southwest rep recently told me they will be flying to the Hawaiian Islands in 2016. Anticipating in 1st quarter. Has anyone heard the same?

Flying to Maui we've found tons of economy space on UA...the 5.5 hour flight isn't bad knowing you're headed to paradise. We even took 4 kids this past summer. And honeymooners in love might be less cognizant of the crappy UA hard (and soft) products to Hawaii. Time it right through SFO and go visit the AMEX lounge, good food and room to relax.

I agree with Luis. I have flown ATL-HNL and DFW HNL many times over the past few years for work, always in economy. When I exit through the upper class section I can't believe the mess: it looks like there was a frat party going on. Delta in Comfort+ is really not a bad option for flying to Hawaii. Just bring a meal and sit back and enjoy the free movies. The real vacation starts when you get off the plane. Save your miles for destinations where getting there is part of the adventure.

@Paul
If that's true it would become the route with the most Companion Pass flyers ever...

Man I hope it's true.

You're missing one little feature of AS's program; if you take the allowed one-way stopover (similar to using the "free international gateway" stopover AA had for years), you can effectively get an F seat to anywhere AS flies to in Hawaii as an add on to any AS partner award.

Thus: BA LHR-SJC(stop)-LIH, KL AMS-ORD(stop)-PDX-OGG, or AA ZRH-JFK, AS-LAX-SEA(stop)-KOA (the last award is one I've booked).

Okay, here's how I would plan it. Transfer 85,000 MR points to Hawaiian and book coach tickets from PHX to LIH for 42,500K a piece. It might be between 5-10k more if you don't have the Hawaiian Airlines mastercard from Barclays. Then use Avios points to get from DFW-PHX. The HA tickets would be from July 19th to July 29th. There is availability on AA in 1st class that would get you to PHX the same morning July 19th,AA flt. 1942. Then since the flight back from LIH gets into PHX at 10pm they would just overnight it and take one of many AA flights leaving PHX using again Avios points. Again you could fly 1st class from PHX to DFW. Having flown over a dozen times to Hawaii, in both 1st and econ, it's rarely worth the extra miles to get 1st class. However, flying on HA from PHX to LIH, you can generally upgrade to snag some seats with more leg room from about $70 a piece. I hope this helps.

You're missing one little feature of AS's program; if you take the allowed one-way stopover (similar to using the "free international gateway" stopover AA had for years), you can effectively get an F seat to anywhere AS flies to in Hawaii as an add on to any AS premium partner award.

Thus: BA LHR-SJC(stop)-LIH, KL AMS-ORD(stop)-PDX-OGG, or AA ZRH-JFK, AS-LAX-SEA(stop)-KOA (the last award is one I've booked).

And when you live here, Hawaii - West Coast IS the positioning flight!

Tiffany,
I think what CLH made could be a very simple mistake--use BA to search, but NOT segment by segment. From my experience--I hardly (ever?) see BA website finds awards with more than ONE stop, which eliminate most of the options in this case--my guess is if he/she searches DFW-HNL it would have been a totally different story, and hopefully adding an HNL-LIH segment on HA wouldn't be too hard either using mile or cash.

@Paul, If that is the case I need to find a way to get the Companion Pass again!

I'm currently using my SW CP for mainland and some international flights. Adding Hawaii would make it incredibly valuable.

What is the cash price of the trip? That should factor into these calculations as well.

If CLH is not concerned about getting a good value, s/he could redeem for 2 F tickets on the AS flights from SAN-LIH (18th, 19th or 20th) and then LIH-SEA redeye (on 28th) using 160k Delta miles transferred from MR-- and then book tickets on AA using Avios separately. On the 20th, there is availability on the nonstop DFW-SAN at 07:15, and on the 18th and 19th there is availability connecting through PHX that would arrive in SAN on time. There is plenty of availability SEA-DFW on the 29th. Not a very good use of miles though.

I think for VX, the SFO/OGG flights on M, W, Th, F are timed in such a way that connecting to and from DAL is possible without an overnight in SFO.

What's the price for AAnytime awards on American? It might not be worth all that hassle to save a few thousand miles. I'd look into DFW-OGG or DFW-HNL with a almost never ending supply of connections on Hawaiian to Lihue.

Unless I've misunderstood, in your AS example via San Diego there's no reason why Dallas to San Diego needs to be on Alaskan. Availability permitting, you can fly DFW-SAN on AA (I assume they fly that route?) and then SAN-LIH on AS.

In this case, would it make sense to transfer MR-->SPG-->AA?
180,000 MR = 60,000 Starpoints = 75,000 AAdvantage miles = enough for 2 F tickets to Hawaii using a combination of AA and AS.

Is access to the "ask lucky forum" only for select members?
I get a blank screen when I try to access it.

I feel the pain for booking Hawaii from DFW I thought it would be so much easier than our last home in ATL...Wrong. You can get a lie flat seat on DL but have to route through ATL to do it adding hours to the trip. So next preferable is nonstop 8 hour flights. We usually do 2 islands so open jaw with a island hopper in between is the way to go. There is a direct flight in business saver AA to OGG and HNL and I play with one way availability to from HNL, OGG, LIH ( I think there is one short route return flight from LIH) as well as flights that go through PHX that have good aircraft both legs. If non stop is unavailable, PHX is about halfway and the best routing...we used USair flights through there before leaving Hawaii late evening and waking up in PHX the next day was a good transition back to continental time zones.
Unfortunately availability has only gone down during merger mania ( I haven't checked lately), but unless your able to plan one year in advance, or jump on tickets available 3-5 weeks out, finding 2 really good seats is a frustrating endeavor.

@ eponymous coward -- Indeed, and have done that myself. The problem is our friend doesn't have Alaska miles in this case.

@ Jeremy -- If they had AA miles, that might not be a bad option. But I think buying a ticket (if reasonable) is probably going to be a better value.

@ Callum -- Because they would be using Delta miles for the Alaska flights they wouldn't be able to include the American flights on a single award.

@ Andrew -- Hmmm, that could work, but seems like an awful lot of miles for just a one-way, no?

@ gj -- No, it should be open to everyone. Not sure why that's happening, but thanks for the heads up!

Hi there - thank you to Tiffany for this wonderfully comprehensive post, and to everyone for chiming in with suggestions. I have gone through and checked each one but unfortunately I believe Tiffany is right that paying for a ticket is going to be a better value. I cannot find anyway to use my MR rewards (200k) or Avios (200k) to end up with 2 first class tickets from DFW-LIH.

Because their hearts are set on Hawaii, choosing Bali or Greece will not work (though I'd personally agree to change the destination too!). So I think the best I can do is to offer them the Virgin America flights from SFO-OGG or HNL in first class. Or economy all the way on Delta for miles and pay cash to upgrade them to Comfort plus. I realize that is not a good use of miles but paying cash for the 2 economy tickets would cost around $2500-$3000, so using the 160-180k MR points to save them the money is worth it to me. Now that I am following this blog and using the credit card strategies, I think I'll earn back the points and miles soon enough.

I have definitely learned a lot through this exercise, and I am hoping that following examples here will help me spend those BA miles in a useful way eventually.

Thanks everyone!

P.S. I am having similar problems accessing the forum - I keep getting the same message: "An unexpected database error occurred. Please try again later."

@Tiffany Oh yeah, so they are.

I hope you don't take this as a criticism as it's a brilliant post, as everyone else is saying, but it seems a bit needlessly complex and confusing! You could cut out a huge amount of the descriptions, keeping the important information and making it a lot easier to follow.

Though I do realise you were posting your thought process for their particular scenario and not a general guide.

We got 4 first class flights from NYC-LIH for January on US Airways/AA with AA miles via Phoenix, and 3 on the way home on AA via LAX (have kids under 2 - man it's gonna be a long flight for us). Not the best first class, but better than coach for such a long flight, plus we got 10K of the AA miles back since we have the credit card.

I posted this on the Ask Lucky forum, but just wanted to put it here too, in case anyone else is trying to book tickets to Hawaii. There is a happy ending to this frustration!

Woohoo! I did it - I booked 2 first class tickets to Hawaii. Not on Virgin - I called Virgin Atlantic and they told me they could not book Virgin America tickets to Maui because the route hasn't started yet and therefore isn't in their system (even though tickets already for sale on Virgin America site). The rep was really kind and tried to help me find a way to book the tickets using Virgin miles, but there was no way to make it happen without a really awkward connection, an extra night in SFO and still paying for intra-island flights.

But, I found a few extra Delta Skymiles hiding in my account (which doesn't show up in Award Wallet so I didn't realize they were there). And my last round of MR points posted, plus the lovebirds were able to shift their dates by 1 day to fly on Sunday 17th, so I was able to buy two tickets at 110k each, total 220k Skymiles for the two tickets which are DFW-LAX-LIH. Only one connection is pretty nice and not having to purchase extra flights is worth it.

I realize it's probably not the best value anyone ever achieved with MR points, but my sister and her fiancé are thrilled, and I'm so happy I could give this to them.

Thanks again for all of the tips and suggestions and encouragement. Now I think I'm off to apply for a Citi Thank You card, since I clearly need to earn some more points.

P.S. Special BIG thanks again to Tiffany for writing such a great comprehensive post which is really helpful on understanding award bookings in general!