Airfare to Hawaii is WAAAY up this year over last year. We had orig. planned our trip to DL / Aulani & Maui for last August then had to cancel at the last minute due to a medical emergency with our DS. We had booked on 3 diff. airlines and each airline had their own cancelation policy for us to deal with - thankfully we didn't lose our shirts on it and we are re-planning the trip for this summer. But because I just booked LAST January and again THIS January I know exactly how much higher everything is.
I have heard good things about Alaska Airline and last year they were by far the cheapest for some of our flights and they had itineraries I liked (a flight back to DC from Maui with only 1 stop and less than 13 hrs. total travel time) so I booked some of our flights with them. In fact their first class seat was a couple hundred dollars less than United's coach seat!! When I had to cancel they told me there would be a $100 pp fee
BUT they also gave me one full year from our orig. date of initial travel to rebook and fly!! That's why we're re-planning the trip for this year - we had $2,100 already tied up with them!! Also why I already went ahead and rebooked our flights with them when I found them for approx. the same amount as what we paid last year - I didn't want to mess around with that credit not being enough to cover this years flights. We are also using them from DC to LAX.
Even our little one-way inter-island hop from HNL to Maui on Hawaiian Airline was higher this year. Last year I paid $68 pp and this year I re-booked it for $86 pp (they did not charge me a penalty and had given me 1 year from our orig. purchase date to rebook our canceled flight from last year). I kept waiting for it to go down but it never did so on my last day before our credit expired I finally rebooked it.
We are stopping at DL for a few nights on the way which has made the entire trip more expensive and why I have booked us in separate "legs". Last year I was able to book our hop from LAX to HNL on Delta for $272 but this year it has been consistently running almost 2x that amount on pretty much all the airlines. I recently read an article on some Hawaiian website (while trying to research Allegiant Airline) and it basically said that all of the airlines have cut back on their total number of flights to / from Hawaii this year which has caused a supply & demand thing with the prices - and which is why they're all higher. Fewer flights = fewer seats = higher demand = higher prices. This is across the board on all airlines BTW. FYI Delta's cancelation policy from last year was that they didn't charge us a penalty fee but we had to rebook AND FLY somewhere by the 1 yr. purchase date (which was January 27) and which is why we went to FL over MLK weekend. I wasn't going to let that $816 go to waste!!
I came close to booking that flight from LAX to HNL on Allegiant because it was running just a few $$ over $200 but I wasn't satisified with what I found out about them. They don't fly the route every day and when they do fly it's only 1 flight per day and they HAVE been known to cancel a flight from time to time which has left people stranded. I wasn't willing to take that gamble. We have used Hawaiian Airline on previous trips and are members of their FF program so I receive emails from them. A couple of weeks ago I received an email saying that effective Aug. 1st they are starting a "comfort plus" section on these flights so I priced it out. While it WAS $60 higher than their reg. coach seats it includes 5" more legroom, a pillow & blanket, "free" entertainment, priority boarding and an AC power outlet so I compared it to the other airlines and it was only $2 more than Delta's coach seats so I went for it and booked it!! It's a limited # of rows and I figured the extra 5" of legroom would be nice for a 5 1/2 hr. flight. When we went to FL on Delta last month the seat in front of me was so close that with my aging eyesight (and even WITH my progressive lenses) I couldn't read what was written on the top of the tray table on the seat in front of me.
THAT IS TOOOOO FREAKING CLOSE!! So I paid $534 pp for that one-way flight which is a LOT higher than what I WANTED to pay. But today, it was up $39 from that so I am glad I went ahead and booked. Last year I watched after I booked and none of the flights I booked ever came down. They only went UP. I would be jumping out of my skin to wait until 3 months out to book our airfare!! In comparison to that flight from LAX to HNL that I paid $534 for I only paid $493 for our flight home from Maui on Alaska Air!! CRAZY.
FYI true to my screen name, I am pretty darned anal retentive and I watch not only kayak.com but airfarewatchdog.com, the airline matrix website AND each airlines individual website. I will say that there have been times when comparing this one to that one that I have found Hawaiian Airline to sometimes have cheaper fares directly on their website that were not reflected on kayak etc. For example lately kayak has been showing that inter-island hop we booked at $92 but it's still $86 on their website. So while they often DO match I would say to always, always check them directly too.
Then to seal the deal when I read the reports of canceled flights and stranded Hawaii pax I couldn't live with booking them. Esp. since they don't even fly the route every day. That was more risk than I was willing to put into their cheap price.
It's just to costly to GET there. We will be sure to savor the trip...
