Long range planning: how do you get to Aulani (MD/NoVA)

[vicki_c]

We are considering an Aulani trip in 2017. We live pretty close to BWI and that is our preferred airport. So ... How do we get to Aulani? I did a little basic research for Easter timeframes (our trip would likely be Easter 2017) and many of the afternoon flights go to a hub out west somewhere and the connecting flight leaves the next morning. How does that work? Do you have to get a hotel? I looked at flights from Dulles and a lot seemed similar although there was one non stop to Honolulu but it cost 2x what the connecting ones did.

So how do folks do this from the DC area (don't want to use National airport either). How do you travel there without using up too much of your limited vacation time? In my ideal world, I would pick that non stop from Dulles, but not sure if that's feasible budget-wise.

Thanks for any insight. We don't fly much and only to Florida, so we are clueless about these far away locales.

 

[wdrl]

There are more options available to you if you are willing to depart in the morning. We have flown from Houston to Hawaii several times and we always leave in the early morning and arrive in Hawaii in the early afternoon. Its the return flights that always seem to be more of an issue for us. The last two times we returned from Aulani we caught a red eye United flight that left HNL around 7:30PM and arrived in Houston about 8:15 AM the next morning. I imagine flights going all the way to Washington, DC or Baltimore would have the same overnight itinerary.

Out of curiosity, I checked Orbitz to see what flight options are available for IAD-HNL flights on April 2. There is a one-stop that leaves IAD at 5:45 AM and arrives HNL at 1:08PM, which is typical of west-bound Hawaii flights. Ironically, that IAD-HNL flight changes planes in Houston (IAH) and continues as a non-stop to HNL. The price of $802 round trip per person seems reasonable based on what we normally see for flights out of Houston (Houston rarely has bargain flights).

 

[Anal Annie]

I live in Montgomery Co., MD, so not too far from you, and have been to Hawaii 5x now including our trip to Aulani this past summer. I am however willing to go to whichever of our 3 local airports are the cheapest one overall, although if money was no object I would pick BWI because we could use the ICC to get there and the FastPark lots are the cheapest parking. That said, I have used all 3 of them tho and lately find BWI doesn't offer the best flight times / prices so I haven't used them since SW gobbled up Air Tran. The competition out of BWI just isn't what it used to be. National is my least fav. mainly bcuz parking down there costs a boatload so I also always figure in what getting to / from the airport will cost us too when pricing flights (we left during AM rush hour last summer so I hired a car service to / from but at the other airports I self park). (The car service price was in the same ballpark price-wise as parking at one of the Crystal City hotels and taking a shuttle.) United offers direct flights out of Dulles but you can also find good deals at Dulles on Virgin America to the west coast - then you could use Hawaiian Airline from there or something. Delta will xfer either in Atlanta or someplace out west like Salt Lake City or in CA and American often goes thru Dallas FW. This past summer we used Alaska Air out of DCA here to LAX (where we spent 3 n at DL) and then we used them from Maui to home via Portland, OR and it was by far the cheapest option for us. We used Hawaiian Airline from LAX to HNL and for our inter-island hop. FWIW Hawaiian Airline is wonderful. I agree with wdrl that you should probably try to leave on an early morning flight for the best connections and total fight duration time. You have to be really careful of the overall flight durations or else you will be on long layovers. You can (and should) try to book something that has a total duration of approx. 12 1/2 hours from this area. That is always my goal for these flights (no more than 12 1/2 hours total) and it is completely doable. You should not be stuck with an overnight layover someplace. There is no reason for that. Try this website - it will give you EVERY POSSIBLE combination of flights and has a lot of parameters you can pre-set. http://matrix.itasoftware.com

wdrl - when we left Maui last summer we left at like 9:30 at night (we planned it that way so we would have a full day that day on Maui bcuz we only had 3 nights there so we were trying to maximize our island time). Then we got into Portland, OR around sunrise there (6:00 am or so). We had about a 2 hr. layover and then got back to DC around 4:30 or so that afternoon. You are right about $802 being a pretty good price too!!!!

(FWIW I have heard rumors that SW is going to start service to HNL sometime within the next year…) Good luck!!

 

[vicki_c]

Thank you both, that is very helpful! I just didn't know where to start. I'm open to anyone else's opinions too, I have about two years (maybe less 7 months for booking!) to think about it.