Questions and Answers

I’m putting together a trip for 2 to Hawaii and would prefer to fly SFO – OGG on Hawaiian, since the trip isn’t until next year and they should have the upgraded A330 on that route by then. My points strategy is to get a Hawaiian airlines card for my wife and I (72k after sign up bonuses and min spend), and then to transfer 20k SPG and 23k MR points to get up to 120k, which is enough for 3 legs. The last leg I’d pay for with an Arrival+ card and use the sign-up bonus to cover most of it.

That’s the plan, anyway… it’s not bad for 5K in minimum spending across three new cards plus a reasonably small chunk of my existing point balance. The question, though, is how good availability on Hawaiian is for first class saver awards on a popular route. Anyone have experience here, including best time to book? I’m about 10 months out from the trip at this point. Thanks!

Good plan, but Hawaiian has horrible saver availability in first. You can check online now and see what it would look like.

Thanks Tiffany, that’s what I was afraid of… oh well, backup plan is to buy two legs with thank you points and pay cash for the other two, using the arrival+ bonus. Pretty terrible value on those thank you points (1.3 cpp), but I’d rather do that than fly economy.