V-Flyer

After our wonderful 2 night, 1 day stop over in Santa Monica, we were ready to start the first leg of our trip to Kona, Hawai'i, via HNL. Picked up on schedule, as always, by the Blacklane driver and into LAX in less than 25 mins as there was very little traffic at 7am. Into the Hawaiian Airlines check in area at T2 to maybe 60 pax scrabbling around. We were advised to use the self check kiosk, which we did to grab our boarding cards for both legs and pay for baggage, then were told to wait until your name was called in order to drop your bags. Now, this system could've worked but there was only a small gap between the kiosks and the desks, this meant that there were loads of pax, in a small amount of space bustling for the next agent. Name got called, bags taken and then it was through security and into the departure area. LAX was pretty quiet at 7.45am on a Friday, so security was a breeze.

We had decided to upgrade our seats to economy comfort at the time of booking and we were pleased when we were priority boarded after children, less able, gold this'n'that. When on board we were shown to 11 H&J which were the first seats behind business. The seats were blooming lovely; very comfortable, massive legroom (more than business) with a couple of windows to look through. Perfect choice! The flight time was 5 hours and 18 minutes and we were flying on an A332.

This was our first time on Hawaiian and, I have to say, I was immensely impressed. All CC seemed to be proud to work for them, they had a very friendly but professional approach and the whole feel of the flight was one that was relaxed and had a family feel. The announcement proudly stated that Hawaiian were the only U.S. Carrier to offer free on board meals, which we accepted kindly and, actually, for aircraft eggs was pretty good! Drinks (non alcoholic), water and snacks brought around later on in the flight as well as a wonderful rum punch prior to landing. I really enjoyed the flight, loved the CC and thought that a few airlines could learn from these guys.

We landed on time but had to wait as the Captain said a medical emergency on another Hawaiian flight had taken precedence, no issue with that. After a 20 minute delay we taxied to gate 33 to disembark.

A great flight and a good start to our first Hawai'i trip.

HA are a great airline and the flights we had with them a few years back were excellent ( unlike Dragonbaby's recent flight to HNL with AA which she pronounced as "awful").
Enjoy all the islands have to offer .
DL

Thanks for the TR. What a good choice of seats sounds like you had a really good flight. We flew from LAX to HNL quite a few years ago with Delta that was a really poor flight in economy.

Sounds like a great experience. Maybe one day I'll make it out there....

Thanks a lot for the TR, it sounds awesome ! Much better than my January experience with UA on the same
route, that's for sure ...
Even my return flight on First (still on UA) wasn't particularly overwhelming either ...
We have Hawai'i in the pipeline for 2017 so will definitely consider HA over any other choices.

julmops wrote:Thanks a lot for the TR, it sounds awesome ! Much better than my January experience with UA on the same
route, that's for sure ...
Even my return flight on First (still on UA) wasn't particularly overwhelming either ...
We have Hawai'i in the pipeline for 2017 so will definitely consider HA over any other choices.

Have yet to write up the return TR but the flight was as good we just had a slightly disinterested member of CC on our side. The First CC were excellent, really attentive and proactive...being a member of v-flyer makes you notice these things.

Thanks for all your comments! We did have a great time on the Hawai'i Island and Oahu - so different in so many ways. A wonderful place to visit and somewhere we never thought we would ever get to.....just very expensive so be prepared - that was a statement from a local who said it cost $6 for a gallon of milk where in other states it would be $2-3!! You only live once