Any tips on cheaper air fare?

[kayteekt]

I really want to get to Aulani within the next few years...but when I look at airfare I decide otherwise

We're in SC. Every time I look into it, flights look like they'd be around $1,000 per person. We are a family of 4 and could possibly talk our inlaws into going (part of 7-9 total depending on who all would go). I feel like we would go over the summer and stay 10ish days - to make the trip worth it.

We hardly ever fly, we drive to Disney World (8hrs).

Any tips on getting a good price on a flight. Are there better/cheaper days of the week to fly (and book)?
What airport do you need to fly into? Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[thornton0511]

We are in the beginning phases of planning a 2018 summer trip and to soften the blow of the price of airfare, we applied for a few airline credit cards, and hope to book our flights using points gathered from spending on the cards. We never ever carry a balance so interest is never a factor for us. Currently we have a Hawaii Airlines and Alaska Airlines. Both have great sign up bonuses if you can meet the min purchase in the time frame.

 

[longboard55]

We have a friend in Hawaii who always uses priceline but that means a last minute booking. The shoulder months are the cheapest, april may September October. But airfare wars are sure not what they were before. Credit card deals help a lot

 

[kayteekt]

We are in the beginning phases of planning a 2018 summer trip and to soften the blow of the price of airfare, we applied for a few airline credit cards, and hope to book our flights using points gathered from spending on the cards. We never ever carry a balance so interest is never a factor for us. Currently we have a Hawaii Airlines and Alaska Airlines. Both have great sign up bonuses if you can meet the min purchase in the time frame.

This is what I was thinking, I need to find a CC that offers good airline points! We do take advantage of CC points and I'm not opposed to opening/using a card just for the bonus points/perks. We've done that with SPG and have earned lots of free nights at Swan/Dolphin. I've never redeemed points for airfare, so I'm going to have to figure out what card I should get. hmmm...

 

[kayteekt]

We have a friend in Hawaii who always uses priceline but that means a last minute booking. The shoulder months are the cheapest, april may September October. But airfare wars are sure not what they were before. Credit card deals help a lot

Yes, it's hard...I'm trying to wrap my mind around it. Do you book the room, then look for flights or the other way around. With the flights easily costing more than accommodations, I almost want to chase the best deal on flights. Normally, we'd travel off season (we homeschool and can do that), but if our in-laws go, we'd have to go over the Summer.

 

[Gorechick]

You'd fly into Honolulu Airport ( HNL ).

 

[longboard55]

Yes, it's hard...I'm trying to wrap my mind around it. Do you book the room, then look for flights or the other way around. With the flights easily costing more than accommodations, I almost want to chase the best deal on flights. Normally, we'd travel off season (we homeschool and can do that), but if our in-laws go, we'd have to go over the Summer.

Hawaii is super popular now, Mexico was once a competitor but the drug lords killed that. Summer is going to be expensive, if you can go the last weeks in August you can sometimes find a better deal.

 

[thornton0511]

This is what I was thinking, I need to find a CC that offers good airline points! We do take advantage of CC points and I'm not opposed to opening/using a card just for the bonus points/perks. We've done that with SPG and have earned lots of free nights at Swan/Dolphin. I've never redeemed points for airfare, so I'm going to have to figure out what card I should get. hmmm...

Good ones to look for are Hawaii Airlines Mastercard, Alaska Airlines Visa Signature, SPG Amex, and Marriott Chase Visa for flights. I mentioned the Marriott bc you can transfer those over to SPG at a 3:1 ratio which helps and use SPG as a central "hub" to transfer points to airline miles in batches of 20,000 and get a bonus 5,000 everytime. That's what we are going to do anyways lol. Good luck to you!!

 

[WardFam]

I recently opened a chase sapphire reserve card and transferred the points to Korean Air where you can book round trip tickets to Hawaii for 25,000 points. It has a 50,000 bonus right now so that's 2 free flights right away! The availability of flights is limited and I had to call several times to figure out when it would work and then jump through some hoops with paperwork. But it was worth it for me!

 

[Midoria]

HTA is obsessively pushing for more tourism and airlines are responding by adding more flights over the next year. I don’t know how that affects ticket prices, so maybe someone who has experience can advise if this will raise or lower prices.

Also, I've never had an airline credit card other than the Hawaiian Airlines one no I don't know what the norm is , but I find that when I try and go to the mainland, the rewards seats are often sold out. So I've been in the situation where I have more than enough miles, but still have to buy my ticket outright.

 

[kayteekt]

HTA is obsessively pushing for more tourism and airlines are responding by adding more flights over the next year. I don’t know how that affects ticket prices, so maybe someone who has experience can advise if this will raise or lower prices.

Also, I've never had an airline credit card other than the Hawaiian Airlines one no I don't know what the norm is , but I find that when I try and go to the mainland, the rewards seats are often sold out. So I've been in the situation where I have more than enough miles, but still have to buy my ticket outright.

I just saw an article about that online...regarding adding more flights. The article stated that flight costs should go down. I imagine we will just have to wait and see.

 

[kayteekt]

I recently opened a chase sapphire reserve card and transferred the points to Korean Air where you can book round trip tickets to Hawaii for 25,000 points. It has a 50,000 bonus right now so that's 2 free flights right away! The availability of flights is limited and I had to call several times to figure out when it would work and then jump through some hoops with paperwork. But it was worth it for me!

This is blowing my mind...transferring to Korean Air and then booking a delta flight? Right? Just stumbled upon this online. I'm going to have to investigate further. It appears I can transfer SPG points to Korean air/skypass as well, that's good to know.

 

[shari2137]

Check out Beat of Hawaii, they offer some insight on airfares, etc to Hawaii

 

[blondietink]

You know you can transfer your SPG points into various airlines for either points or buying seats with points directly through SPG. We have done both. If you have a lot of SPG points, it might pay off to go that route instead of transferring them to an airline as most airlines now are limiting the seats available in their own airlines program. Right now American has the bonus available ... transfer 20,000 points and get an automatic 5,000 extra points, plus right now through July American will also give another 5000 points for a total of 30,000 points.

Also, book early since I have never seen fares to Hawaii go down in price ever in the last 5 years. For example, I purchased our flight in January for our September trip for $825 each and now the fare is over $1,000 each. Lastly, I would try and stay as long as you can to maximize your cost of flying there. We try and go for at least 2 weeks, 3 weeks preferably and split our time between Oahu and another island.

 

[WardFam]

This is blowing my mind...transferring to Korean Air and then booking a delta flight? Right? Just stumbled upon this online. I'm going to have to investigate further. It appears I can transfer SPG points to Korean air/skypass as well, that's good to know.

I know it's crazy, and it wasn't just a simple get online and book a flight. I had to set up a family plan with Korean and send over passports and call to work out flights, but it ended up working out really well for me! I am just starting to think about using cc for points - we've always had cash back, but I'm sold!

 

[Jemwillow]

I really want to get to Aulani within the next few years...but when I look at airfare I decide otherwise

Any tips on getting a good price on a flight. Are there better/cheaper days of the week to fly (and book)?
What airport do you need to fly into? Any advice would be much appreciated!

We got a Hawaiian Airlines card which offered 35,000 points ,plus half off one companion airfare. Flying from the east coast our average price was $800 per tix. It was 3 of us in total and that was the final price taking in all the points and discounts. Versus paying about $1300-1400 per tix. Now HA is offering 50000 pts. But be careful there are a lot of rules regarding the use of the points which was not clear when I got the credit card. If HA does not fly directly from your airport then you have to connect with a different airline, ( what they call codeshare) in this case you can't use the points. So we had to do two separate bookings. Even taking that into account we still saved $$$ it takes a lot of planning and almost spent 8 hours booking the flights, plus the free ticket had to be booked separately and then linked to my reservation. All I can say is read the fine print once twice and three times before applying and call if necessary. There is a Facebook page called the points guy, and he reviews many credit offers and gives tips on how to fly on the cheap with points.

 

[Elima2015]

I personally prefer a credit card that lets you use points on any travel purchase. We fly so many different airlines these days that it would be hard for us to justify an airline-specific card. We also aren't subject to any blackout dates or limited free seats on any flight. We book ours and then when the charge shows up on the credit card, we simply apply the points available to the transaction. Can also be used for hotel.

That said, we used to get a ton of use out of an airline specific card when we lived in the same city as their hub - there were lots of flight options and the perks like free checked bag, companion fare, decent options for free ticket redemption couldn't be beat.

If I were you, I'd look into your airline options out of your closest city and compare that airline to the broader travel benefit cards and see where you would maximize your perks.

 

[nkereina]

We fly out of Buffalo and paid about $1100pp on Delta in September. We booked it shortly after their flight schedule was released, around 10 months out. What was more important to us was one layover and a comfortable flying experience in coach class, so we opted for Delta through Atlanta on an Airbus 330 plane. We lucked out that the price also happened to be among the cheapest options as well. I've looked at the same price for other times of year and it's closer to $1400pp for us, so I'm not sure if it was the days we flew or because we booked so early that we got a better price. We left on a Thursday and came back on a Friday overnight into Saturday in late September.

 

[Jemwillow]

This is a good point. I knew I wanted to fly Hawaiian Airlines so I went with that But really read through all the tips by the Points Guy. There is a Chase sapphire card that he highly recommends and it offers more points. Also, check that there are not block out dates. With HA it said there were none, but that was not true. When I went to book the free tix from pts it was missing one flight that would have put us in HNL earlier. I had that flight open in another screen and luckily I didn't book it first. THen the half of companion tix must be an adult. SO I had to book my daughters free tix as a separate reservation. Then call and link it so we could choose seats together. It made the planning a nightmare and in hindsight I would have been just as fine with any other airline that had a more direct path and less complications with the points. So I flew three different airlines on this trip Hawaiian, American and United. The first two were comparable in comfort coach class for 5+ hour flights. UNited I felt I was going to eat the headrest in front of me.

 

[dolewhipdreams]

We are planning/booking our first trip to HI and here's what we did for flights: We have a Chase Sapphire card and we transferred enough points to Southwest and booked a flight from the Midwest to the west coast (we are stopping at DL anyway so this worked out for us, but could still be a good choice if you're going straight to HI). Then we booked a separate flight through Hawaiian airlines to get to HNL, then booked a separate flight through AA that takes us back to the Midwest. This isn't the most straightforward route, but we ended up saving about $600 between the two of us by putting all the puzzle pieces together.

I also recommend the Hopper app, which allows you to scan for airline deals and keeps you updated on when to buy your flights for the cheapest option. For instance, I put in a watch on flights to Orlando for a trip to WDW and it would pop up occasionally and say something like "Prices have dropped for your flight, but we think they'll go lower. Don't buy yet." Eventually it will tell you that it's a good time to buy your flights. It's not perfect but it's better than a blind guess!