"Best" direct flight airport to HNL?

[squirk]

We are in the early stages of planning a trip to Aulani for Thanksgiving 2017. While I am a very seasoned flyer, I have never flown to Hawaii before.

There are no direct flights to HNL from our home airport, so we will need to make at least one stop.

Is there any airport that is "best" in terms of flying direct to HNL? I would think the obvious choices are SFO or LAX, as those would have the shortest flight times and, consequently, the lowest prices.

But is that necessarily true? Is there another airport - SEA or LAS, for example - that might actually have better pricing, greater flight frequency, or some other benefit that makes them preferable departure locations? I know "best" is a subjective term, and airline prices can be weird, but is there any reason SFO or LAX would not generally be the "go-to" choice?

 

[sgrap]

We are in the early stages of planning a trip to Aulani for Thanksgiving 2017. While I am a very seasoned flyer, I have never flown to Hawaii before.

There are no direct flights to HNL from our home airport, so we will need to make at least one stop.

Is there any airport that is "best" in terms of flying direct to HNL? I would think the obvious choices are SFO or LAX, as those would have the shortest flight times and, consequently, the lowest prices.

But is that necessarily true? Is there another airport - SEA or LAS, for example - that might actually have better pricing, greater flight frequency, or some other benefit that makes them preferable departure locations? I know "best" is a subjective term, and airline prices can be weird, but is there any reason SFO or LAX would not generally be the "go-to" choice?

We found sea Tac pretty good, and I have heard that the smaller airport in Bellingham Washington sometimes has great deals.

 

[squirk]

We found sea Tac pretty good, and I have heard that the smaller airport in Bellingham Washington sometimes has great deals.

Thank you! That's what I am talking about - reasons why the obvious choice may not be the best choice.

 

[margot31]

A friend who lived in Hawaii told me to stay away from SFO if you have kids. She said the best was LAX.

I was leaving DC and went through Phoenix when I went out there and returned through Dallas.

 

[OKW Lover]

It really depends on where you are flying from. We live in central FL and have gone to HNL three times now. The first was MCO>ATL>HNL. The second was MCO>LAX>HNL. For this trip we decided to go back to the MCO>ATL>HNL routing because we liked the aircraft choices better.

 

[The_Banking_Scot]

Hi,

I would look at Hawaiian Airlines as they have a number of destinations in the US , including San Diego, LAX, SFO, Las Vegas ( and probably others). Their economy service is supposed to be good but some destinations may only have 1 flight a day to Hawaii so if there are any delays they could be long ones. Do you have any frequent flyer miles?

 

[squirk]

Hi,

I would look at Hawaiian Airlines as they have a number of destinations in the US , including San Diego, LAX, SFO, Las Vegas ( and probably others). Their economy service is supposed to be good but some destinations may only have 1 flight a day to Hawaii so if there are any delays they could be long ones. Do you have any frequent flyer miles?

Thanks. I have plenty of Southwest miles, so I can get to/from pretty much all of the airports mentioned above for free. BOGP had mentioned Las Vegas and then grabbing a direct flight on Hawaiian out of there. I took a look at their fares for this Thanksgiving, and they seemed reasonable.

@OKW Lover - I'm guessing your ATL-->HNL flight was on Delta?

 

[cedricandsophie]

We are in Chicago. Leaving Friday may 20 for aulani on a nonstop flight that leaves at 915 am and gets in about 130 pm into Honolulu On united.

 

[OKW Lover]

@OKW Lover - I'm guessing your ATL-->HNL flight was on Delta?

Correct. As was the LAX route

 

[RJLechner]

We just got back from Aulani. We flew Hawaiian Airlines from Oakland, CA. When we researched, this airport had the lowest price.

 

[bcwife76]

Assuming you don't want to fly to Canada and then Hawaii but we live in Vancouver BC and fly direct to Hawaii. We are flying direct to Maui next weekend and YVR was the cheapest direct flight vs SEA or LAX. 4 of us are flying round trip direct for $1500CDN (which is about $1100USD). But then you'd need a passport so if you don't have passports that's an added cost you don't need ;-)

 

[keaster]

We are in Chicago. Leaving Friday may 20 for aulani on a nonstop flight that leaves at 915 am and gets in about 130 pm into Honolulu On united.

We flew this last year (we flew from Toronto to Chicago first) Problem free flight, but didn't like there was no in-seat entertainment. You could use your own tablet but not all seats had chargers.

 

[skylynx]

We also got R/T tickets through Oakland on Hawaiian airlines that were the cheapest we could find, and OAK's a manageable airport (easier to get into and out of that SFO, for sure) if you want to go the night before/stay an extra night the night of your return from HNL. We're using Southwest miles to cover the Denver/Oakland segment. The R/T fare in early December for us was $440 per person for flights that get us in and out of HNL at a civilized hour.

 

[Vernie822]

I'm not sure how much I can help, but I'll provide our experience.

We live in PA so it is easy to fly out of PIT.
We had enough Southwest points (roughly 31,000) to get us from PIT - LAX and back for free.
Wanting to spend a night in LAX beforehand (Sunday night, the day after our wedding), we are flying to LAX on a Sunday.
We bought a RT ticket through United from LAX to Hawaii (LAX - Maui and HNL - LAX).
We bought tickets at around $79 each to get from MAUI to HNL (Hawaiian airlines).
Spending 3 nights in Disneyland on our way back, so going back to LAX made sense.

Seems confusing, but the SW flights were free. I believe our RT flights from LAX-Hawaii were around $700/person including insurance.

 

[nkereina]

Agree that it depends on where you're coming from. Flying from Buffalo, our options were Chicago, Newark, JFK, or Atlanta. We ended up going with Atlanta layovers both going and coming home. Our airline is Delta. We thought the flight times were best for us, the layovers were enough time without being stressed, and the planes were nicer. We also find Atlanta to be easy to navigate.

 

[twodogs]

I was very interested in trying Virgin but that meant a stop in SFO for us from Dallas. We can go nonstop DFW to HNL so stopping in SFO to get on a nicer plane was not too tempting. But I did consider it as the planes AA uses aren't really great yet on the nonstop. As well, we would have had to fly into SFO the night before since the flights to HNL left SFO too early for us to get there the same morning from DFW. Adding icon hotel for 6people in SFO plus back and forth to airport was a deal killer. But I hope to try Virgin some other time! Nice planes!!

 

[Rubygoose]

If you collect frequent flyer miles, you might want to look into where the airline's hub is - you'll be likely to find several non-stop flights from their hub. We like to fly with Alaska air, and their hub is Seattle. I like the SeaTac airport, and since we're in Victoria, we often stop in Seattle no matter where we're going. It's a large airport, but it's well laid out and they have subway trains to bring you from one section to another. We looked into flying down to San Francisco for a couple days before heading to Hawaii, but most of Alaska Air's flights from California stop in Seattle, so there really wasn't any point. Also, it looks like the flight time from SEA to HNL is about the same as from LAX and other California airports.