Post #699605 by bamalamalu on Sat, Nov 16, 2013 12:09 PM

If your dates are flexible, just look at the different days around the time you want to go - most of the airline sites as well as expedia/travelocity will show the fares for the days before & after the specific dates you enter. I've never found any day of the week to necessarily be better than another - even if Wednesday is usually the least-booked (and therefore likely the cheapest), the week you're going there could be a couple big groups who happened to book. It all just depends on how many seats are available for that specific flight on that specific day. Jan-March has actually been busier in recent years - this February is looking to be really busy based on my planning. It used to be that Summer, Thanksgiving & Christmas were the busiest, but 'low' season seems to be disappearing.

Expedia, Travelocity, & the like can be good to get an idea of all the airlines' fares at once, but I always book directly with the airline. You'll be able to get the same fare directly, and adding a middle-man can be a bad idea if you run into changes or cancellations or other issues.

If you're doing more than just Oahu, you definitely want to use Hawaiian for your inter-island flights if possible. Island Air doesn't sound as bad, but Go and Mokulele have pretty awful reviews. To be fair, I haven't used them myself (I always used Aloha in the past & Hawaiian more recently) but I haven't heard much good about them.

Hawaiian uses larger planes from the west coast with a 2(aisle)4(aisle)2 seat configuration, so you can get a window & an aisle seat together, which I really like. And they do have that Hawaiian feel. Their service is pretty good and they'll actually serve you a meal for free. They now have two 'coach' fare classes - regular Coach and Coach Plus. The Coach plus includes 2 free checked bags and doesn't charge a change fee if you change your itinerary. The annoying thing was, as least as of last year, they won't let you book your mainland & inter-island flights all together in one ticket as Coach Plus. So we had to book a separate ticket from here to HNL, and then the inter-island flights on a separate ticket. Not a big deal (they'll check your luggage all the way through if you're just connecting), just kind of annoying. Since we planned to check bags anyway, that turned out to be the better price vs. booking regular coach and paying for bags. We didn't need it, but the waived change fee also gave some peace of mind. Compare both options and see what makes the most sense for you.

We'll be using Alaska next time, since they've now added a Nonstop from SD to Lihue. I'm not crazy about the 3(aisle)3 seat configuration, but being able to go non-stop is great and for our dates it was actually cheaper than doing Hawaiian with the HNL connection. I've flown Alaska a bunch to other destinations and their service is usually fine.

I think it really just comes down to playing around with the dates and seeing what's out there. When you find something that looks good, grab it.

Then book your rental car as soon as possible - maybe even quickly check on that first if you're going at a busier time. Especially on the outer islands, cars can get booked up and get really pricey. As long as you're booking in advance and not going over a holiday, you should be fine, but don't leave it til the last minute.