Southwest flights to HI on sale

[MamaRoo]

decided to keep my trip still a better deal booking two flights. cost more going to Oakland than going to Oahu. now got to find a place to spend the night in Oakland next to airport.

I like the Hilton. It’s the closest to the airport and they offer a free shuttle. That area is a little sketchy, and I feel safe at the Hilton.

 

[tidefan]

I like the Hilton. It’s the closest to the airport and they offer a free shuttle. That area is a little sketchy, and I feel safe at the Hilton.

I hope that it's better than it was when we stayed there on our last trip to Aulani. It reeked of a certain substance that is not banned everywhere anymore.

We are going this summer. Got in on the SW rates. I took the Holiday Inn next door...

 

[goofynut41]

Well I've booked the Marina Inn on the Bay it offers free shuttles also, anybody ever stayed there?

 

[Lawdawg]

Seems like the prices from the west coast are great. Does anyone know which cities are flying nonstop to Hawaii? We'd have to get to the west coast from the east coast first, so I'm not sure Southwest's routes will make sense for us.

I'm pretty sure that SW will only be flying to Hawaii from the West Coast. I do not foresee them having any non-stops from anywhere in the middle to eastern portions of the U.S. Their current fleet of planes are not long haul aircraft, so 5/6 hour flights are about the max for them.

 

[dwheaton]

We just missed it! We're leaving on March 14th, so it was a bit too soon. It would still likely be more for us in St. Louis, but we probably would have at least saved a few hundred dollars per ticket versus flying American.

 

[WDWmom08]

The Oakland and San Jose flights are already sold out for mid May.

 

[keishashadow]

I don't see any 49 dollar seat all I see is 159 dollar from Oakland and everytime I go back its went up, whats the deal? So I have to fly into Oakland and spend the night and the next day take another flight to Hawaii? So I gotta book two flights?

Many of us have been stalking the travel sites that kept shouting SWA would be releasing flights by last Fall. Things amped up last week it was ‘any day’.

No non-stops from PIT. Heck, few NS available to even the west coast lol.

Decided to split the travel into 2 days each way. Kept watching my dates into the 4 gateway cities climb dramatically. Gave up & went with Alaska Airlines, booked a month or so ago. Happy with cost of flights out, including picking own seats...in area of $750 for 2 pp. baggge will be extra.

Coming back from HNL into San Diego on Alaska was in area of $500 for the 2 of us, more than I really wanted to spend. Tempered with being able to use SWA credits the next day to fly home. Came in under the $2K I had budgeted for airfare & tired of waiting around for SWA to finalize things.

A nice option though that it’s there for a possible return trip!

Supposedly, LAX & LAS will be offered soon, to be Followed by NS from Phoenix & St Louis

 

[nkereina]

I'm pretty sure that SW will only be flying to Hawaii from the West Coast. I do not foresee them having any non-stops from anywhere in the middle to eastern portions of the U.S. Their current fleet of planes are not long haul aircraft, so 5/6 hour flights are about the max for them.

Yep. They're not even building the flight segments coming from the east coast. For example, when I looked up BUF to HNL, I was expecting to see a flight to BWI (or MDW), connection, flight to San Jose or Oakland, connection, flight to HNL. So two connections. But when I search it, it just says its something about that's not a route offered or something to that effect. I'd have to build my own flight segments, booked separately. And then it's not really that cheap anymore. Kind of bummed on it!

 

[sperkins921]

We are going out in late September and coming from New England. Southwest doesn’t make sense for us either. For those having trouble you will need to select your search as a multi city if you are not originating on the West Coast. Just search for your originating airport to one of the west coast airports and from one of those to Honolulu and you will get the segments on the first try.

Problem is that for us personally, it is cheaper to fly direct from JFK on Hawaiian or even direct from Boston on Hawaiian than it is to mess with Southwest even when factoring in lack of baggage fees. Not to mention those direct flights from JFK and Boston have us getting to Hawaii somewhere around two in the afternoon. Conversely, for us to even do Southwest would mean flying our first segment Thursday night into Friday morning or Friday night into Saturday morning (you get the idea) and then taking the Hawaii flight the next morning versus getting up the morning of our trip and taking the whole thing in one shot and landing in Hawaii early afternoon.

Sadly, the southwest adventure for us also ends up being more expensive and more time-consuming than doing a layover in California for the weekend such as people like to do when they are visiting Disneyland or San Diego or what not. We did that on our last trip to Hawaii and it worked out to be financially reasonable and close to same cost as the direct flight the only difference was we ended up landing in Hawaii around 10 or so versus two in the afternoon.

I’m excited for Southwest to do this but for right now I suspect that for many of us on the East Coast; especially if we can fly in and out of the top-tier airports relatively easily, it will not make financial sense. Nor make sense time wise either.

 

[Drewferin]

Southwest will release flights past Nov 1st on 3/18. They delayed it by 4 days due to the 737 Max groundings. (Granted they only fly 737-800s to Hawaii).

We got SW flights from Denver to Honolulu for 5 people in June during their introductory sale for 102k total SW frequent flyer points. I hear they will have more great deals for their next release of flights.