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I love Hawaii, and while there are a few other options to fly there in lie-flat seats with other airlines, I have always wanted to experience First Class with the island’s main flagship – Hawaiian Airlines.
In this post, I’ll show you how to find Saver Award availability to fly the Hawaiian Airlines first class lie-flat seat and provide points and miles options to book it.
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Hawaiian Airlines Lie-Flat First Class A330 Routes
Before we begin, it is vital to know that Hawaiian Airlines currently only have lie-flat seats on its Airbus 330 aircraft, and Hawaiian Airlines does not fly A330 on every route between mainland USA and Hawaii.
Below are a few routes that you can expect Hawaiian Airlines First Class lie-flat seats installed:
- San Francisco (SFO) to Honolulu (HNL) – 5h55m
- Los Angeles (LAX) to Honolulu (HNL) – 6h15m
- Seattle (SEA) to Honolulu (HNL) – 6h30m
- Las Vegas (LAS) to Honolulu (HNL) – 6h35m
- Phoenix (PHX) to Honolulu (HNL) – 6h55m
- Orlando (MCO) to Honolulu (HNL) – 10h55m
- New York (JFK) to Honolulu (HNL) – 11h20m
Hawaiian Airlines First Class 1 Vs. 2 Miles Redemption Chart
Hawaiian Airlines award chart has two types of award miles redemption, referred to as First Class 1 and First Class 2.
The main difference between the Hawaiians First Class 1 and 2 is only the miles required to book.
- First Class 1 refers to the Saver Award, which requires 40,000 HawaiianMiles for one-way between the mainland USA and Hawaii.
- First Class 2 refers to non-saver award miles that require a lot more miles, 80,000 HawaiianMiles for one-way between the mainland USA and Hawaii.
Whether you book First Class 1 or First Class 2 award tickets, you will receive the same First Class seats, services, and amenities on Hawaiian Airlines. Therefore, the goal here is to find the Saver Award as much as possible because it will save you several thousands of HawaiianMiles.
Useful Link:
How to Check Hawaiian Airlines Saver Award Availability
Hawaiian Airlines First Class award availability is plenty. However, the challenging part about flying Hawaiian Airlines First Class lie-flat seats using miles and points is the ability to find award availability for Saver award tickets. They are fairly hard to find but not impossible.
There are two methods that I use to check Hawaiian Airlines award availability:
- Hawaiian Airlines website
- ExpertFlyer
As I mentioned above, it is not difficult to find Hawaii Airlines First Class non-saver miles tickets, and you can use the Hawaiian Airlines website for that. However, if you want to find saver miles tickets, ExpertFlyer is better. The only catch is that ExpertFlyer is not free, but I’ll show you both ways to check and find Hawaiian Airlines’ award availability.
The Hawaiian Airlines website lets you check award availability online for exact dates, or you can use the dates navigation on the result’s page to check availability. Here’s how:
- Go to the Hawaiian Airlines website.
- Log into your HawaiianMiles account if you are not logged in.
- Click on Book on the top and click on Flights. Alternatively, you can go directly to the flight search page here.
- Provide your search parameters, and select Miles under the “Show Fare as.”
- Once you are done, simply click on the Search Flights button.
- On the result page, you can see award availability, miles required, and whether the First Class seat is a lie-flat seat or not.
- If the lie-flat seat is not shown under First Class, the seat is just a recliner seat.
- You can also use the dates navigation on the top to view award availability for different dates.
The ExpertFlyer is a time-saving tool to check Hawaiian Airlines award availability, especially for the saver award tickets. However, the service is not free for such search functionality.
You can utilize ExpertFlyer to help you score Hawaiian Airlines First Class saver award seats without checking award availability every day. Please note the following instruction only works if you are an ExpertFlyer premium pro subscriber:
- Go to the ExpertFlyer website, and click on Award & Upgrades.
- Input your departing airport and arriving airport, depart date, and set plus or minus 3 Days.
- Select Hawaiian Airlines, and choose the “First – Saver & Partner Awards (D)” option.
- Once you are done, simply click the Search button.
- On the result page, you can click on the exclamation sign to Create Flight Alert for a particular flight and date that you want to be alerted when the Hawaiian Airlines saver award becomes available. See the screenshot below.
- You can also send a test email of the alert to ensure that ExpertFlyer alert emails do not go to your spam/junk mail.
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| Photo Credit: ExpertFlyer |
My Two Cents of ExpertFlyer
I was hesitant at first to subscribe and pay for the ExpertFlyer premium service. In my honest opinion, if you love miles and points hobby and you constantly find yourself spending way too much time trying to check award availability that is hard to find, I think the ExpertFlyer subscription cost is well worth it:
- The Free Trial of ExpertFlyer Pro is only five (5) days.
- The Basic ExpertFlyer Pro plan is $4.99 per month, but it does not include the award flight availability alerts mentioned above. You can, however, check and search for award availability and create saved queries so that you do not have to enter the search parameters each time you want to perform an award availability search in the future.
- The Premium ExpertFlyer Pro plan is $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, and you get all the functionalities that ExpertFlyer offers.
- Direct Link to ExpertFlyer Subscription Plans.
How to Book Hawaiian Airlines Lie-Flat Seats Using Miles & Points
Below are miles and points options that you can use to book Hawaiian Airlines flights, whether directly with HawaiianMiles or partner programs.
I suggest that you go through all possible miles booking options in this post before deciding which miles program to use. You need to be ready to book when you can find enough saver award tickets because the availability can go away quickly.
Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles
HawaiianMiles are the most obvious choice to use for redeeming Hawaiian Airlines First Class between the mainland United States and Hawaii. However, there are more programs that I’ll mention below.
The best way to book Hawaiian Airlines lie-flat seats First Class:
- Use 40,000 HawaiianMiles to book if you can find any saver award availability.
- It does not matter if you are located on the West Coast or the East Coast United States.
- The tax for one-way is also super low, $6.
- You can also connect to a neighbor island for the same miles and tax fee.
- For example, you can fly from Los Angeles to Oahu/Honolulu to Maui for the exact 40,000 HawaiianMiles plus a $6 tax fee.
Finding a saver award ticket for 40,000 HawaiianMiles is challenging, so when the saver award is available, the sooner you book, the better. You’ll need to have HawaiianMiles available and ready in your Hawaiian Airlines account. The good news is that Hawaiian Airlines decided to remove change and cancellation fees on award tickets. Therefore, if you wish to cancel your award ticket, Hawaiian Airlines will redeposit your miles and refund the tax to the original payment method you used.
How to Earn Hawaiian Miles?
The fastest way to earn HawaiianMiles is to earn them through the following:
- Hawaiian Airlines credit card signup bonus miles.
- Transfer points from American Express Membership Rewards (MR).
It’s worth mentioning that Amex has an exercise tax offset fee for points transfer to domestic airlines such as Hawaiian Airlines. The fee is $0.60 per 1,000 points transferred, and therefore, if you want to transfer 40,000 American Express Membership Rewards (MR) points to HawaiianMiles, you will be paying a $24 fee.
The time it takes to transfer Amex points to HawaiianMiles is also instant, so you can wait until you see the saver award ticket becomes available and then transfer the points if you’d like. Amex also offers a transfer bonus to Hawaiian Airlines from time to time too, so be sure to subscribe to our blog posts below to get notified when the next transfer bonus is.
JetBlue TrueBlue Points
You can also use JetBlue TrueBlue points for Hawaiian Airlines if the saver award ticket is available. JetBlue has a redemption award chart for Hawaiian Airlines below:
- West Coast US to Hawaii:
- 22,000 TrueBlue points, one-way in economy class.
- 45,000 TrueBlue points, one-way in business/first class.
- East Coast US to Hawaii:
- 30,000 TrueBlue points, one-way in economy class.
- 70,000 TrueBlue points, one-way in business/first class.
- Taxes and fees are the same $6 as what Hawaiian Airlines charges.
- Direct Link to JetBlue’s Hawaiian Airlines Award Chart
How to Earn TrueBlue Points?
You can earn a lot of TrueBlue points from signing up for a JetBlue credit card:
JetBlue TrueBlue points may be easier to earn than Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles. Besides the JetBlue credit cards, JetBlue has more partners with flexible points credit card issuers than Hawaiian Airlines does. You can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR), Citi ThankYou (TY), and American Express Membership Rewards (MR) points to TrueBlue at a 1:1 ratio, and the transfer time is instant! Moreover, these credit card programs sometimes offer transfer bonuses, so be sure to subscribe to our blog posts below to get notified when the next transfer bonus is.
You cannot book Hawaiian Airlines flights using TrueBlue points on the JetBlue website, and you must call JetBlue to book. This post detailed my booking experience using JetBlue TrueBlue points on Hawaiian Airlines to Tahiti.
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Points
Hawaiian Airlines also partners with Virgin Atlantic. You can use Flying Club points to book the Hawaiian Airlines flight if there’s a saver award ticket.
Like JetBlue, you have to call Virgin Atlantic to book Hawaiian Airlines flights using Flying Club points, and it’s not possible to do that on the Virgin Atlantic website. The annoying part about calling Virgin Atlantic is that the hold time can be super long, especially now that Virgin Atlantic has removed the text messages feature.
Virgin Atlantic has an award chart for Hawaiian Airlines redemption below:
- West Coast US to Hawaii:
- 20,000 Flying Club points, one-way in economy class.
- 40,000 Flying Club points, one-way in business/first class.
- East Coast US to Hawaii:
- 40,000 Flying Club points, one-way in economy class.
- 65,000 Flying Club points, one-way in business/first class.
- Taxes and fees are the same $6 as what Hawaiian Airlines charges.
- Direct Link to Virgin Atlantic’s Hawaiian Airlines Award Chart (Please note the Flying Club points listed on the website as round-trip).
How to Earn Flying Club Points?
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles are easy to earn as well. You can earn Flying Club miles from the Virgin Atlantic credit card issued by Bank of America.
Besides the Virgin Atlantic credit card, Virgin Atlantic has a partnership with a handful of flexible credit card points programs that you can convert those points to Flying Club points. Those partners are:
- American Express Membership Rewards (MR)
- Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR)
- Citi ThankYou (TY)
- BILT Rewards
The nice thing about the transfer is that those credit card programs offer quite often transfer bonuses to Flying Club points each year. Subscribe to our blog posts below to get notified when the next transfer bonus is.
United Airlines MileagePlus
You cannot use United MileagePlus to book Hawaiian Airlines flights between the mainland US and Hawaii. I mention it here because Hawaiian airlines and United have a special partnership. You can use MileagePlus to book Hawaiian Airlines flights for neighboring islands only, for instance, Honolulu to Maui or Maui to Kauai.
Amex 35% Points Back
Last but not least, suppose you find it impossible to book Hawaiian Airlines First Class because of limited saver award availability. In that case, the Amex 35% points back can be a good option if you are a card member of the American Express Business Platinum Card.
Amex 35% Pay With Points Rebate works like this: if you purchase a flight ticket for either Business or First Class through Amex Travel using your American Express Membership Rewards (MR) points, you’ll receive 35% points back.
In some circumstances, using the Amex 35% points back benefit is not a bad redemption because most airline programs outlined in this article require at least 40,000 miles to book a one-way Hawaiian Airlines First Class ticket between the mainland US and Hawaii. Therefore, if you are flexible and can find reasonable airfare for Hawaiian Airlines First Class lie-flat seat, you can potentially use American Express Membership Rewards (MR) points to buy the ticket and get 35% points back. The total points you used are comparable if you were to redeem airline miles instead. Moreover, remember that when you use Amex points to purchase a flight ticket via Amex Travel, you’ll also earn the miles you fly.
For instance, I was looking at a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu. The airfare for one First Class seat was $700. Therefore, I could redeem 45,500 American Express Membership Rewards (MR) points after the 35% pay with points rebate, and I’ll earn the miles that I fly. If you are flexible enough, you may be able to find cheaper airfare for certain Hawaiian Airlines routes, but just make sure it’s a lie-flat seat. Use Google Flights search to find airfare and view the seat type. See the screenshot below.
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| Photo Credit: Google Flights |
