Transportation to Aulani

[high meadows]

Does anyone have tips on snagging the cheapest flights to Hawaii? And, while we're there, any tips on rental cars to go to the many sites on Oahu? Thanks for any help!

 

[gigi1313]

not sure where you are traveling from, but hawaii air just added flights to/from NY... their prices seemed reasonable, and they have direct flights, no changing/layovers

 

[vacationclub]

Unfortunately cheap flights aren't going to easy to come by for Hawaii. We used flyer miles to get there.

The bigger issue is actually the schedule options and how you want to get there. Flying directly there in one day, especially from the eastern parts of the US, is just plain brutal. We split the trip into two parts, flying on one airline to PHX, then staying overnight and taking USAIR from PHX to HNL the next day.

Many flights from HNL back to the mainland are red-eyes (overnights), also tough, and again we stayed in PHX on the way back to help with this.

 

[gigi1313]

how did you find prices for stopping overnight in PHX? when looking at costs, i found flying NY to Cali and Cali to Hawaii to cost double what flying directly from NY to Hawaii costs... is PHX less expensive to Hawaii?

 

[vacationclub]

how did you find prices for stopping overnight in PHX? when looking at costs, i found flying NY to Cali and Cali to Hawaii to cost double what flying directly from NY to Hawaii costs... is PHX less expensive to Hawaii?

Yes, you will have to buy two separate flights. That's the price for sanity and sleep. PHX is where USAir goes to HNL from, and we had free tix on USair. We flew SW to PHX, stayed over, then flew USairways the next day to HNL. Returned to PHX a week later, stayed over (after arriving at 8am in PHX and sleeping a good part of the day) the used our return round trip on SW to get back home.

Otherwise our choice (at least on US Airways where we were using our flyer miles) was to fly non-stop for over 10 hours, and on return, leave at 11pm, fly all night, connect in PHX, wait for hours in a terminal after not having any hotel room for almost 24 hours, take another flight to either CLT or PHI, then wait again, hope we don't get stranded or delayed, get home over 24 hours after checking out of hotel room, with little sleep (unless you can sleep on the plane) since you woke up the day before. No way. We paid extra.

Some airlines will leave HNL during the daytime which will ease the return, but we had free tix on USAir, so we did what we needed to do to take advantage. They only have two departures per day from HNL, both at night.

 

[gigi1313]

wow, yeah... it certainly sounds like it can be a hassle unless you are able/willing to pay... i had not thought about using our SWA credits to get us part of the way, that's a good plan...