Booking inter-island flights with United Miles

[klpca]

Tonight's interesting booking exercise - We're headed to the Big Island next spring, followed by a week on Kauai. I booked our mainland<->island flights last week but hadn't booked our interisland flights yet. On the way home from work, I remembered that I had about 11,500 United miles that I've had to top off more than once to keep from expiring and wondered if I could use them for our interisland flights. Lo and behold, I could - and they were only 6,000 miles each on Hawaiian using the United miles. For comparison, they were about 9,500-11,500 miles on the Chase Ultimate rewards site or 7,500-8,500 on the Hawaiian site.

I transferred 1,000 miles from Chase UR to United, they posted immediately, then I booked the flights. I couldn't select seats, but I don't care for the short flights. It was a great way to finally use up those orphan miles since we rarely fly United. I'm still surprised that it was fewer miles to use United than either Hawaiian or Ultimate Rewards.

 

[chellej]

Good Luck....I used United miles for our flight from Honolulu to Molokai and then from Molokai to Kauai in April. It was a nightmare. They changed our flight 3 times. I finally got a united supervisor to get it changed back to our original flights which Hawaiian had said no longer existed when they first changed us and that their website was incorrect. 3 months later it was still showing and it took an hour on the phone to get it changed.

Since I booked the ticket from HNL to MKK separate they could not transfer my luggage....the agents were able to get it checked through to Maui but then I had to go transfer it manually to molokai flight. They said it was because Hawaiian and united no longer had an alliance.

Then, the flight into Honolulu from molokai was delayed (the next week) and we missed our connection by literally minutes. The gate agent said to go to the service desk and they would put us on the next flight. While waiting in a very long line, I called Hawaiian air to try and get confirmed on the next flight. Was told they could not change it I would have to call Uniited to change the flight....what?!? So I called United and they were able to get me on a flight 4 hours later.....got to the service desk counter at the same time I was talking to united and she said she could put us on the next flight standby but not if United changed the flight. So we took a chance on standby and luckily made it. The frustrating part was if we did not make standby for the next flight, we would not roll over for standby on the next flight, we would have to go back to customer service and start over and this was because a problem with their plane that made us miss the flight in the first place.

At the time, I was again told that united and Hawaiian no longer had an alliance and that was why it was difficult......I am suprised that you can still use miles...... For me it was not worth the hassle and I would not do it again.

Check and make sure that they will be able to join the tickets and check your bags the whole way through....If I had to recheck my bag in HNL instead of Maui, I would have missed my flight. I did not think I would have a problem with the bags because I was able to link the reservations in my united FF account but at the ticket counter they couldn't find the hawaiian flights.

 

[klpca]

Good Luck....I used United miles for our flight from Honolulu to Molokai and then from Molokai to Kauai in April. It was a nightmare. They changed our flight 3 times. I finally got a united supervisor to get it changed back to our original flights which Hawaiian had said no longer existed when they first changed us and that their website was incorrect. 3 months later it was still showing and it took an hour on the phone to get it changed.

Since I booked the ticket from HNL to MKK separate they could not transfer my luggage....the agents were able to get it checked through to Maui but then I had to go transfer it manually to molokai flight. They said it was because Hawaiian and united no longer had an alliance.

Then, the flight into Honolulu from molokai was delayed (the next week) and we missed our connection by literally minutes. The gate agent said to go to the service desk and they would put us on the next flight. While waiting in a very long line, I called Hawaiian air to try and get confirmed on the next flight. Was told they could not change it I would have to call Uniited to change the flight....what?!? So I called United and they were able to get me on a flight 4 hours later.....got to the service desk counter at the same time I was talking to united and she said she could put us on the next flight standby but not if United changed the flight. So we took a chance on standby and luckily made it. The frustrating part was if we did not make standby for the next flight, we would not roll over for standby on the next flight, we would have to go back to customer service and start over and this was because a problem with their plane that made us miss the flight in the first place.

At the time, I was again told that united and Hawaiian no longer had an alliance and that was why it was difficult......I am suprised that you can still use miles...... For me it was not worth the hassle and I would not do it again.

Check and make sure that they will be able to join the tickets and check your bags the whole way through....If I had to recheck my bag in HNL instead of Maui, I would have missed my flight. I did not think I would have a problem with the bags because I was able to link the reservations in my united FF account but at the ticket counter they couldn't find the hawaiian flights.

Yikes. That sounds like a nightmare. But believable because Hawaiian is fine as long as they are fine. When things go wrong, they have a tough time recovering. We'll be using carry-ons so no issue with bags but of course they can change these flights since I've booked so far in advance. I already went on to the Hawaiian site, added my Hawaiian numbers, selected seats and set up my alerts. I also added it to Tripit - they are pretty good at letting me know when things change. I'll keep my fingers crossed, but thanks for the heads up.

Just out of curiosity - were they using the United confirmation number or the Hawaiian confirmation number? I'm just wondering which number controls in this situation.

 

[chellej]

I am not sure what number they used.....I was able to link them on United's trip planner but when I got to the AIRPORT the gate agents could not see the hawaiian segments

 

[BocaBoy]

Just out of curiosity - were they using the United confirmation number or the Hawaiian confirmation number? I'm just wondering which number controls in this situation.

The Hawaiian confirmation number would be the controlling one in this type of situation.

 

[klpca]

The Hawaiian confirmation number would be the controlling one in this type of situation.

Thanks. That is what seemed intuitive, but I wasn't sure.

 

[cgeidl]

Hawaiian miles Interisland

I just booked one way from Oahu to Kona using Hawaiian miles and booked befor e8M for 7500 miles per ticket. After that it was 15,ooo miles per ticket economy class.Last year we were thinking of going to Kauai for the weekend from Oahu and the flight was within a few dollars of going RT from San Francisco. Rates for interisland have gone thru the sky for weekends.
Just booked to go to Ecuador and return from Columbia for less miles than a Hawaiian inter island trip.

 

[klpca]

One more follow up to the story - and it's kind of unbelievable. About six weeks ago I received the dreaded "your flights have changed" email from United. Based upon this thread I had a sense of dread when I logged on to check the flights. I couldn't figure out what was going on. There was only one flight now - the original flights were KOA-HNL-LIH - I thought in the rebooking process they had dropped a leg. Then I realized what happened. Hawaiian had recently advertised a new direct flight KOA-LIH, and now we were booked on that flight. The departure time was within 15 min of our original flight and of course we now arrived about an hour sooner. I was able to select seats on the Hawaiian website. I didn't want to post anything sooner and jinx it, but it looks like we are good. I check it weekly and it's still there - and we're now less than 30 days out...

 

[BocaBoy]

We have booked inter-island flights using United miles in the past, but for us it is worth the extra 1500 miles per ticket to use Hawaiian miles, and because we have the Hawaiian Airlines credit card we get free bags. Having said all that, if I had the orphan UAL miles that OP did, I would probably book with United miles too.