MY REVIEW OF HAWAIIAN AIRLINES
We flew from Auckland to LAX return with Hawaiian, but due to the stops both ways in Hawaii, we flew 4 legs altogether.
On all four legs we paid for the upgrade to extra comfort seats. This upgrade is supposed to include extra legroom, priority boarding, access to the seat-back entertainment system, fast track security through Honolulu airport, blankets and pillows, and an upgraded meal and comfort pack on the international legs. You can probably tell from my use of the word 'supposed' that these things were not always delivered as promised.
Every single one of the 4 legs was different to the others and I'm left feeling a bit bewildered as to my feelings of the airline as a whole. My overall feeling is mostly negative, due to a dreadful 3rd leg (more about that later), but there were also pros that need to be acknowledged.
PRICE
I think it would be unfair not to acknowledge that the price we paid for our flights was excellent. Hawaiian were easily the cheapest on offer at the time, and even with the extra comfort upgrade, we paid less than the standard economy prices being offered by some of the competition. They also have an extremely generous luggage allowance.
SERVICES
It ranged from extremely friendly and helpful on the second leg (HNL to LAX) to surly and uninterested on the first leg (AKL to HNL). The women serving us on that leg just seemed to have lost interest in their job and I never saw them smile once during the whole flight.
On a side note, on that same flight, the plane was half empty. That worked out great for many, as people spread themselves across rows of seats and fell asleep. DH and DS moved to an empty middle aisle of 4 seats, so we could all have 2 seats each.
I napped briefly and when I woke up I noticed that DS was spread along the 4 seats, and DH had lay down on the floor (there was heaps of room being extra legroom seats) and was sleeping there. While he wasn't encroaching on the aisles, I must admit, I knew that what he was doing was frowned on due to there being no seatbelts. However, I chose to let him sleep for a tiny bit longer as he wasn't hurting anyone and I knew how completely exhausted he was.
Anyway, I drifted back off to sleep and was woken about 45mins later to a loud, aggravated air hostess. She had called another hostess over to look at DH and they were making a big fuss over how unsafe it was that he was on the floor. I'm sure they must have woke up many people around us.
Then, instead of tapping him on the shoulder and asking him to get up (which they were perfectly in their right to do), they woke my MIL up instead and demanded to know if this man 'belonged to her'. When she replied that he's my son, they told her that she needed to wake him up immediately and tell him to move.
For a start, my husband doesn't 'belong' to anyone. And secondly, since when did air hostesses need to wake one sleeping passenger in order to wake another? It's not like DH was acting hostile. He was just an exhausted passenger who hadn't slept for close to 24hrs, and out of desperation had thoughtlessly fell asleep on the floor. It kind of felt like my whole family were being berated like naughty school kids.
Anyway, perhaps best to forget that incident and move on.
OTHER MOMENTS OF INCONSISTENCY AND/OR POOR SERVICE
- On the HNL-LAX leg the plane was lovely and new and the seat back screens worked really well. On the two international legs, the screens had trouble registering touch and needed to be pushed over and over and over and over again just to get them to respond.
- On the first leg, the 'comfort pack' was some foam earplugs, an eye mask and some cheap earphones. On the last leg, the comfort pack was a cute little zip-up bag of goodies including the items above as well as lip balm, moisturiser, a case for the earphones, and some wet-wipes.
At the time I booked the extra comfort seats, they included a souvenir blanket and pillow for the international legs. I thought that a bit strange as most people don't have room in their luggage for a pillow and blanket. Hawaiian must have decided the same, as a few months later they changed the included extras to the comfort pack and a (so called) upgraded meal. I was content with the change, but not with the lack of communication. Surely if people pay for a service and you change that service, you should email them to let them know? I only found out about the change through my obsessive research.
As for an upgraded meal, what do you envision when you hear the word 'upgraded'? Maybe I'm a tad optimistic as I envisioned a business class like meal. The only difference I could see between our meal and standard economy was a teeny little salad. The boring sandwich we got before landing certainly wasn't a step up from the rest of economy.
The fast track through security also never came to fruition. There was an obvious line for First Class Passengers, but not for Extra Comfort. When I asked a staff member where the fast line was, she said that because we had a child we had to use Line B instead. Line B was a pre-approved TSA line which meant we didn't have to take our shoes off or electronics out of their bags. Advantage? Definitely not. Line B was the longest in the airport.
The Check-in machines tried to make MIL pay again for her Extra comfort upgrade before it would give her the tickets. Obviously she wasn't going to pay a second time for something she'd already paid for, so she had to stand for close to 45mins in a customer service line before getting the issue sorted.
Despite all my complaints so far about Extra Comfort, I still actually think it was worth the upgrade. The legroom alone was worth it for this tall family. Plus the seats are at the front of the airline behind first class (side note: it's a pretty lousy first class), so they're in a quiet part of the plane.
THE THIRD LEG
I decided to give this LAX-HNL leg it's own section as I may get into a bit of a rant.
We boarded the plane for this leg only to discover we had been downgraded. They had changed the plane to a much older one that had no seat back entertainment and no Extra comfort seats. The problem is, no one throughout the whole check in process had thought to tell us.
Because the downgraded plane had come from Hawaii, and ours was at least the second flight it was being used, Hawaiian knew well before our check-in that our seats had been downgraded.
I wasn't annoyed by the change of plane, as these things (like delays) happen sometimes. I was annoyed by the lack of communication.
Interestingly, when our boarding passes were first printed they said 'Seat Request' on them. When I went up to the counter to ask what it meant, the staff looked at my booking, mumbled something between themselves, and then just reprinted our passes with seat numbers.
While waiting in the boarding area, offers were put forward to the room to upgrade to first class for a discounted price. I also believe some people were upgraded for free. But no one bothered to call us up and tell us about our downgrade.
Needless to say that 5 1/2 hour flight was lousy. I was cold much of the flight as I was was expecting to get a blanket and hadn't taken a sweater onboard. I was also expecting a pillow, so hadn't bothered taking my blow-up neck pillow onto the flight. DH and MIL were bored to death. They hadn't fully charged their tablets as they were expecting to have seat back entertainment. What little charge they had left, they donated to DS so he had something to do.
I was so annoyed, I used my tablet to start writing a complaint email.
None of us had taken magazines or books onboard as we weren't expecting that we would need them. Had someone given us a heads-up, we could have gone onto this flight more prepared.
Not to mention, legroom was lousy. Because of the lack of room, my husband's legs sat at such an angle that he couldn't drop his tray table down to flat.
As soon as we boarded, I called over an airline hostess to ask what was going on. Bless her, she was clearly annoyed for us and I could tell this wasn't the first time it had happened. She grabbed our tickets and went and spoke to someone. When she returned, she apologised and said that an announcement had been made and we would get a refund. Firstly, an announcement had not been made (we had been sitting in the boarding area for over 90min) and secondly, such an announcement should not be made over a loud speaker anyway. Airlines call people up and speak to them privately about upgrades. Surely a downgrade is worthy of the same respect.
The hostess also apologised as the plane wasn't prepared with enough blankets etc to give us one. At one stage they walked down the aisle offering tablets for hire for $18. We believe we should have been given a complementary set to use, and refused to hire some out of principle.
I have emailed my annoyance through to Hawaiian, but got a computerised response saying it could take up to 30 days to get back to me. I am interested to see how apologetic they will be. Their response will affect my lasting impression of the airline as a whole.
At present my impression is: An airline with huge potential, but too many inconsistencies. Better systems would make it quite a desirable airline choice, but changes are needed to get to this stage.
Have a blast!
At least if you know it's going to be crowded, you can prepare for it.
I haven't been swayed by the idea of a Fiji holiday yet either.
