Hawaiian Airlines

Anyway, our first new airline was Hawaiian Airlines. (Actually, our first new airline on the trip was supposed to be ExpressJet but, well, you know how that turned out.) Anyway, since we had never been to Hawaii, we'd never had the opportunity to sample Hawaiian's wares, since that is the only place they fly, strangely enough. They do have flights from a fairly wide range of starting points though. We took our flight from San Diego and normal flight time was five hours from this airport. We arrived at the airport with lots of time to spare since we knew we were in the bad West Terminal where security lines have been known to extend almost off airport property, and no, in this case, I'm really not exaggerating. In any case, as luck would have it, there were no lines at security this morning.

We did miss the Hawaiian Airlines ticket counter because there really isn't one. We finally stumbled on a set of check-in kiosks that were on the opposite side of the Departures Hall from all the other ticket counters. We liked the fresh approach they were taking with issues like baggage weight. They asked us if our bags were overweight and we said no and they took our word for it. Refreshing. We lied of course. At this point we did discover that there was a First Class ticket counter for Hawaiian, sandwiched in between the counters for some of the grown up airlines, but we were already checked in and that counter actually had a scale where our lies would have done us no good. So we gathered up our tickets and made our way down to the gate where we now had to wait for an hour and a half since the airport had tricked us and had no security lines. I hate when they do that.

The flight itself was pleasant and uneventful. First class passengers get a personal DVD player thing which is preloaded with a bunch of movies, TV shows, music videos and other assorted digital dross. I managed to get caught up on a couple of movies that I've wanted to watch for some time, including the Simpsons Movie that was pretty excellent and the second Fantastic Four movie which benefited from not being the first Fantastic Four movie, and let's leave it at that. The only drawback to the player is that you have to leave it on your tray table and so you can't watch it while you're eating. Other than that I liked it quite a bit. The offerings might be less than those available on the more high end AVOD (Airborne Video On Demand) systems but still for a five hour flight quite enough was available to divert me and prevent me from doing any writing or anything useful like that.

The meal on our flight was interesting and somewhat unusual. I applaud Hawaii for thinking outside the box a bit. First class passengers were given a menu of five small plates from which they were to choose three for lunch. All of the ones we had were fair to good and I had no complaints about them. Not haute cuisine, but something a little different and not bad at all. I think cattle class also got something - possibly some partially burnt flesh torn from the carcass of an unidentifiable mammal or maybe a reptile.

The seats on the flight were equivalent to Domestic First on other legacy carriers and less than equivalent to International Business on the better carriers. My footrest was broken and could not be used but they warned me about this before the flight loaded and offered to switch us to a couple of bulkhead seats. I refused since A) I don't like bulkhead seats in First because you can't put your stuff under the seat; and B) I don't care about footrests as I usually don't use them - they always seem to be at the wrong angle for me. Other than that the seats were fine for a relatively quick jaunt from the West Coast, I certainly wouldn't want to try and sleep for an extended period in them. Or more importantly I wouldn't want to have Mary sleep in them since she wouldn't get any sleep and she'd be cranky and someone would inevitably end up with their throat ripped out and there'd be blood and forms to fill out and stuff and it's all pretty unpleasant.

Arrivals was quick and angst free and we had sufficient time to check out the offerings at Honolulu International Airport which weren't much, at least inside the commuter terminal where we waited for our connecting flight to Kauai. The second flight took less then 30 minutes and well, that's pretty much all I can say about it.

The return flight to San Diego was pretty much the same thing but going East this time. Our overall impressions of Hawaiian Airlines were favorable. We'd certainly be willing to take this carrier again next time we want to go to the Islands. We're not sure if cattle class is survivable for a five hour flight but we probably could tough it out. First class is equivalent to most other domestic first class products, with somewhat better service than average and somewhat better meals.