V-Flyer

Our return flight to San Francisco started with a fully self-service check in at Lobby 2 of the Inter Island terminal at Honolulu. Once you had printed your boarding pass and tagged your bags it was a matter of heading over to Agriculture inspection where they take the bag off you and scan it before sending it on its way. Once you have got the OK from them you are cleared to head through security.

Once the TSA had done their thing with us we made our way to one of 2 Hawaiian Airlines lounges located at HNL.

What I would say is basically don’t get your hopes up here, they are very basic. We managed to visit both of them whilst at HNL, the reasons why will become clearer later. The first lounge we visited was located on the 3rd floor of the Inter Island terminal near gate 60. This is the bigger of the 2 lounges and has some windows in it, overlooking the road way for the Wiki Wiki Bus that can transport you around the airport to save you from having to walk. In the lounge were tea, coffee and juice and a few snacks. Plenty of tables and comfortable chairs filled up the rest of the area. After having a cup of coffee we thought we would move on and head to the gate, with the intention of walking, but a Wiki Wiki bus turned up just as we left and waited for us to pass out hand luggage through the agriculture inspection point located just outside the lounge.

A few minutes on the bus and we were dropped off outside of gate 34 where we were scheduled to depart from, the gate area was still reasonably empty as we were early getting their so we seated ourselves by the window overlooking the ramp area. About an hour later boarding began and as is typical everywhere nearly everyone got up and headed to the boarding area despite the fact their boarding zones hadn’t been called. We boarded through the priority lane and took our seats in 01A and 01B on the A330. I’m not going to go into too much detail about the plane as it’s the same as in my trip report dated 29-12-2013 HA11 SFO – HNL.

After pushback we had a longish taxi to the reef runway at HNL, I have been fortunate to have flown into and out of HNL a number of times but until now had never departed from 08R so it was a nice change.

We settled down for an on time departure and as the aircrafts engines spooled up we headed off down the runway. Holiday over for another year I thought as after a long take off run we were airborne and tracking along the Oahu cost just off Diamond Head and Koko Head heading for San Francisco, but this was when the plane had other ideas.

Shortly after take-off we levelled off at 4,000 feet and throttled back to keep to 250kts (thanks to the inflight display for this information). I assumed that there was some passing traffic we were waiting to clear but this went on for a while before we began a right turn, shortly afterwards the Captain came on the PA to announce that there was a problem with the aircraft and that they were currently troubleshooting it but it looked like we would be heading back to HNL (the problem turned out to be a disagreement between the airspeed indicators on the Captains side and the Co-Pilots side). We ended up flying round at 4,000 feet for about 35 minutes before touching down again back at HNL.

Once at the gate we were informed pretty quickly as to what was happening, maintenance had said they couldn’t fix us right away so we were going to have to change planes. We were told what the new gate number was going to be and at what time we had to be there at 5pm for a 6pm departure, the time was now 3pm so we had a couple of hours. Upon de-boarding we were given a $15 food voucher each to allow us to get something to eat so we headed off to Burger King to have something to eat.

We decided that as we still had awhile to go we would explore the other Hawaiian Airlines lounge located near gate 56. This turned out to be the smaller of the 2 lounges and didn’t even have any windows in it. I approached the lounge agent and asked if there was a telephone I could use to call my hotel in San Francisco to let them know that we would be very late arriving just in case they thought about letting our room go.
The agent although friendly wasn’t that helpful and was unsure off the calling abilities of the phone in the lounge. I had kind of hoped that a first class passenger may have been a bit better looked after and that a phone call wouldn’t have been too much of a problem. In the end I had to use a pay phone in the lounge that cost me $14 just for a quick phone call. After a quick soft drink – the drinks and snacks available were just the same as the other lounge we decided to have a walk to our new gate, 29.

Once boarding was underway it became obvious that the flight attendants were a new set obviously called in from home at last minute because they were still rushing around setting things up as we boarded. None the less they were still very warm and polite and came round with drinks and re-took our orders for dinner.

Pushback was right on time from what they said our new departure time would be and the pilot – who was the same as the one on the previous flight – gave a PA announcement explaining what had happened before and promising us to do his best to get us into San Francisco as quick as possible.

A taxi back to 08R the reef runway for my second departure of the day from HNL and we were finally on our way to SFO. Drinks and nuts were served after departure before the dinner service began, the menu for which was:

Appetiser:
Salmon Roulade – served on seedless cucumber chips, or, Hawaiian Chicken Salad – with soy ginger sesame dressing.

Main Course:
Macadamia nut Chicken – with lilikoi ginger sauce and steamed brown rice, or, Roasted Red Pepper Gnocchi – with pecorino cream sauce, grilled zucchini & yellow squash.

Dessert:
Something special from our chef. This was so special that the crew didn’t really know what it was.

In all fairness I think they were told what it was going to be on our previous attempt to go to SFO but because the aircraft had been re-catered it turned out to be something different.

What we actually had was a heart shaped vanilla ice cream with a raspberry sorbet inside all of which was covered with white chocolate and a serving of raspberry coulis underneath. It was really nice.

The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful apart from a screaming child located in the last row of the small first class cabin who did its best to scream all the way to SFO – oh well can’t have everything I guess.

The flight attendants in first class were very friendly and chatty although I suspect they were quite junior – not that there was anything wrong with that they just weren’t quite as polished as the first crew but they were very attentive.

We arrived into San Francisco just before 1am local time after 4 hours 32 minutes which isn’t bad going, de-boarding was quick and we soon had our bags before heading outside to call the shuttle bus to pick us up and take us to the hotel.

So two long haul flights from Hawaiian Airlines under our belt, would we fly them again, definitely, they were warm and friendly and that goes a very long way to making a flight really enjoyable. OK the food wasn’t brilliant but for two flights around 5 hours long it isn’t important. The seats whilst only domestic first class standard were comfortable enough and what made it for us was the price we paid. We paid well over less than half the price that United Airlines were charging for first class at the time and as far as we were concerned the service knocked United Airlines out of the ball park.

Thanks for two informative TRs.

We travelled back from HNL many moons ago in First on Delta. We were disappointed to be told that we wouldn't have lounge access because we had no status on Delta. We had settled in Burger King and after a time Aer John (then aged 14) went for a stroll. Shortly afterwards he came running back, having blagged his way into the Delta lounge! They said he had asked very politely and they "just luuuuurved his cute Irish accent" Pity he had to grow up!

My memory of that flight (which was an overnight one) was that the flight attendant in First had a major conniption while trying to explain that, because of agricultural regulations in Hawaii, they were unable to serve lemon with my G&T. It would have been more of a disaster if they couldn't have served gin with my tonic, ice and lemon! Oh, and every time she passed my seat she topped up my wine glass!