Air to Aulani

[DenLo]

We usually will book our air when we make the reservation for a long flight. And then keep an eye out for any real bargains. I don't have the stamina to doing the waiting game for a lower price. Too often prices have gone up.

 

[Anal Annie]

Thanks for the continued tips! My kids are home schooled, so our travel dates are very flexible. Maybe I'll play with airfare and then book Aulani according to that. If we can get air for $800, I will have enough extra to get DS his own seat. He will be 1 at the time of travel, and I was going to just put him on my lap, but on those long flights I think him having his own seat would be wonderful!

I personally wouldn't book air THEN try to book Aulani at the 7 month window. Esp. since you want to book VGC and 10 nights at Aulani which means you'll have to effectively make 2 reservations AND add the last 3 nights a day at a time. I would want my VGC and Aulani reservations secured THEN would book airfare.

We live near DC and are going to DL at the VGC and then on to a week at Aulani followed by 3 nights on Maui in August and I booked airfare a couple of weeks after I got our reservations secured. Prior to our 7 mo. booking window I had airfare alerts set up on kayak.com and airfarewatchdog.com and saw it go up a little bit like the day after I finished securing our reservations. Then it went up again a few days later. I finally pulled the trigger about 10 days later when I put together an itinerary that I felt was as low as I was going to find. No doubt it's a gamble but I've continued to watch our flights that I booked and they've done nothing but go UP since I booked. No drops. In fact, our same flights are up by a little over $600!

Although I really hoped to try Virgin America and I preferred to book it all in 1 chunk I ended up piecing together our itinerary in separate legs to get the best pricing. The stop in CA for a few days added to the cost. I checked going through several airports on the east coast along with several on the west coast incl. Vegas, PHX, SD and SF along with any and all airlines. I've done this trip 4 times before and knew that I wanted our total travel time to be as close to 12 hours as possible and I wanted our return flight from Maui to have no more than 1 transfer (ie didn't want to go back thru HNL) and I didn't want to switch airlines back on the mainland because I didn't want to have to collect our luggage and go through security again. I wanted to have our bags checked all the way through which meant keeping those return flights booked on the same airline on the same booking. We are using Alaska Air DC to LAX then Delta for the LAX to HNL flight; Hawaiian Air HNL to Maui and then Alaska Air again home from Maui via Seattle. I was shopping for the best bottom line prices but I will tell you that if money was no object I'd have booked First Class on Alaska as their First Class price to National airport from Maui was about $200 less than United's economy prices to Dulles!! Our total pp for everything came to $1,073. I think if you were only going to / from HNL you could find something for closer to $800ish pp. But that stop in LA adds to the over-all cost. Prices for Feb. may be better than for summer vacation too.

Try using this airfare matrix site too. It will show you every combination and flight option available and you can use it with a multi-city option. I found it very helpful to use to compare all the different combinations including different airports and the ability to set very specific flight time windows. http://matrix.itasoftware.com

 

[tripletsmama]

We didn't book the air yet. I am still working on the hotel reservations and then we'll go from there. This morning I got a 2 bedroom at Grand Californian February 1-5. So, on July 5 I'll start the Aulani reservation. Just looking ahead though, Aulani is wide open for all views for a 2 bedroom so hopefully we'll be good to go.

 

[BWV Dreamin]

You might consider getting an Alaskan Airline Visa card. You'll get 25,000 pts for signing up and a yearly voucher for a $118 companion fare with no black out dates.

Does Alaskan Ariline fly to Hawaii?

 

[carlbarry]

I have read several times that Tuesday a 2:30 pm has the cheapest prices. I also understand that Bing Travel has a function that will predict whether an entered flight will go up or down in price.

 

[Anal Annie]

Does Alaskan Ariline fly to Hawaii?

Yes, they do Hope - in fact I booked them for our return flight from Maui - locally they fly thru National airport. Best prices by like a lot for our return trip (only 1 stop which is in Seattle). We are also using them from here to LAX on our way out.

 

[BlazerFan]

I don't know how long they have offered this but of you book on Alaska's website and the price goes down they have a price guarantee and will give you the difference back as a credit voucher. I had 3 of us booked for a business trip and the price went down by $55 and I got 3-$55 credit vouchers. I love that feature!

Although if price isn't an issue, I LOVE Hawaiian Airlines. I feel like I'm on vacation the moment I step on the plane.

 

[G'sMaman]

Does Alaskan Ariline fly to Hawaii?

Hi there! . Does sound counter-intuitive for Alaska Airlines to fly to Hawaii, doesn't it? We have found they have some of the best rates and schedules out of the San Francisco Bay Area. The other good thing is that they are affiliated with American so that expands their network. If you have a Starwood AmEx card you can transfer points with a bonus of 4000 Alaska points for every 20000 Starwood points you transfer. Finally, you also earn points when you use the companion voucher. Can you tell I'm a fan?

 

[Anal Annie]

Hi there! . Does sound counter-intuitive for Alaska Airlines to fly to Hawaii, doesn't it? We have found they have some of the best rates and schedules out of the San Francisco Bay Area. The other good thing is that they are affiliated with American so that expands their network. If you have a Starwood AmEx card you can transfer points with a bonus of 4000 Alaska points for every 20000 Starwood points you transfer. Finally, you also earn points when you use the companion voucher. Can you tell I'm a fan?

We have an AmEx but not thru Starwood - but anyway, we converted our AmEx points to Starwood points to use to book the Westin Ka'anapali Ocean Resort for 3 nights on Maui after our week at Aulani. There are lots of options for those AmEx points!

 

[Horace Horsecollar]

Does Alaskan Ariline fly to Hawaii?

It's called Alaska Airlines (searching for Alaskan Airline will produce unsatisfactory results).

Here's the Alaska Airlines route map:

http://www.alaskaair.com/content/route-map.aspx?lid=nav:planbook-routeMap

Alaska Airlines serves four different islands in the state of Hawaii from the mainland. It's an excellent choice for flights to Hawaii, as discussed in posts 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, and 22 in this thread. Alaska Airlines serves the Hawaii from airports other than the obvious ones (LAX and and SFO). Alaska Airlines often has the lowest prices.

 

[MouseMadness]

OK, so I don't want to hijack this thread, but we want to go to Aulani next year and we currently live in Utah. We'll probably drive to either Las Vegas, LA, San Jose, Oakland, or San Francisco to catch a direct flight over. Checking flights from all these cities everyday could drive me crazy...does anyone have a clue as to which one would probably be the least expensive to fly out of?

 

[Horace Horsecollar]

OK, so I don't want to hijack this thread, but we want to go to Aulani next year and we currently live in Utah. We'll probably drive to either Las Vegas, LA, San Jose, Oakland, or San Francisco to catch a direct flight over. Checking flights from all these cities everyday could drive me crazy...does anyone have a clue as to which one would probably be the least expensive to fly out of?

Delta flies nonstop from Salt Lake City (SLC). Depending on where you live in Utah, you could save a lot on time, gasoline, wear on your car, and hotel nights for the drive between your home and a distant airport.

Hawaiian flies nonstop from Las Vegas (LAS), from Sacramento (SAC), and from San Francisco (SFO).

Alaska Airlines flies nonstop from Oakland (OAK) and San Jose (SJC).

United flies nonstop from San Francisco (SFO), with a bunch of different flight times.

There are also nonstops from Southern California airports on several airlines.

Alaska Airlines will usually have the best airfares.