MJH122

I am very new to Flyertalk and I have some questions that I know are very basic but I am beyond confused right now. My family and I don't travel very often, and the MR we have acquired have taken quite a long time to get. This is what I want to do:

Family of 4 adults, First class to Honolulu from New Orleans next May, using 100,000 or less per person. At this point I'm not sure if this is even possible. I have been looking for a couple of weeks and I even have a fee based service working on it but haven't heard from them so I am assuming they are not having luck either. We can't leave until May 20th and want to stay 9-12 days, so we do have some flexibility. I actually want to go to Kona and Lihue but figured Honolulu will have more availability. I see that we can fly Delta first class but really don't want to blow all of our points on this one trip. It looks like there may be some availability on Hawaiian out of Las Vegas but we would have to get to Vegas and possibly stay a night there (college age kids are loving that).

I don't have any preference on airlines but would love to not have multiple stops and long layovers but at this point I am guessing I shouldn't be so picky. The whole alliance transfers to use UA, AA and US Air are very confusing to me.

We have a little over 537,000 MR and this will be our 4th trip to Hawaii but haven't been in 6 years. Our daughter is graduating college and we want to make this a memorable trip for the family.

Any suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated. I just don't know how to work the system.

saacman5033

A couple quick suggestions for you.

Consider splitting up and traveling in pairs. This will help quite a bit in increasing your odds of finding availability.

Understandable that you don't want to blow all your points using Delta. Also note that flying American is likely to be equally bad due to BA being the lone Oneworld transfer partner and the fact that BA charges by segment. That leaves Star Alliance and probably United flights. I'm guessing your best bet will be flying from MSY to HNL on UA by transferring MR to Aeroplan. Try playing around with availability on the UA and Aeroplan websites to find something that works for you.

mia

There are also Iberia and Cathay Pacific, but more to the point Hawaiian Airlines is also now an AA partner (outside of OneWorld).

If, as you suggested, I search for two seats aa.com is showing good MilesSAAver award availability MSY-HNL-MSY throughout May and June, but nothing if I search for four seats. This suggests that splitting up into pairs will be required. (Clicking through I see that these are often three segment flights, such as MSY-DFW-LAX-HNL.)

A downside to redeeming through HA for flights operated by AA is that flights coded as First Class require 110,000 miles per person. See the chart here: http://www.hawaiianairlines.com/hawa...rlines.aspx#aa

The real problem with redeeming through BA is that they charge 3X points for flights coded as First Class.

saacman5033

Oops, forgot about Cathay. (Didn't forget about Iberia, but they're essentially the same as BA for this situation). I shudder at the thought of any unnecessary dealings with HA's customer service reps, but you're right they are now an option as well.

some dude

I'd also point out that the "Business/First class" experience on an international configuration 767 like on United or an A330 on Delta on a long haul flight to HNL will be much better than a medium haul 737 coming out of Los Angeles. There are even some "traps" like Delta's 767 from Atlanta is actually a domestic configuration.

This blog post is old, but talks about the differences between products: http://www.theflightdeal.com/2011/09...eat-to-hawaii/

Make sure to check the carrier's own website to see what the equipment and seatmap is, and compare it to seatguru to get an idea of what the actual product is on that plane.

I agree with the other suggestions of splitting it into 2+2 to increase your odds of finding what you want.

If you end up not finding the long haul products to get you to HNL, and you are going to the Big Island anyway, you might consider just looking for flights to KOA, as most airlines have flights from the west coast directly to KOA these days (albeit on 737's).

Good luck.

echino

537k MR, that's a lot! You could get tickets for 4 around the world in Business class for 125k x 4 = 500k. But Hawaii - no availability for 4 together. How about transferring to Aeroplan and booking something like this:

May 20 UA1061 MSY-IAH 13:30-14:40 738
May 20 UA1670 IAH-SFO 15:45-18:05 738
Dinner is San Francisco
May 21 BR7 SFO-TPE 01:00-05:10+1 77W overnight flight flat beds



May 22 BR225 TPE-SIN 07:40-12:00 77W
Then book a package from Singapore to either Tioman or Redang. Short 1 hour flight to a paradise beach.



May 26 SQ634 SIN-HND 15:00-23:00 773
Night and day in Tokyo
May 27 UA880 NRT-HNL 19:25-07:20 777 overnight flight flat beds
Hawaii
June 4 UA218 HNL-ORD 19:25-08:35+1 777 overnight flight flat beds
A day in Chicago
June 5 UA3487 ORD-MSY 21:00-23:23 E70 2 business / 2 economy split

All flights are 4 business seats together, except the last domestic sector. Cost: 125k + ~$200 per person x 4.

JWEMTX

Thanks for this suggestion, I've been looking other ways to get to HNL also.

mia

BAEC charges for each segment individually, and a 3X premium for first class redemptions. In the best case:

13,500 points New Orleans to Dallas
60,000 points Dallas to Honolulu
73,500 points per person, one-way

The Avios calculator is here:

https://www.britishairways.com/trave...r/public/en_us

JWEMTX

mia - is there a benefit traveling Dallas to Honolulu versus Los Angeles to Honolulu? I'll be starting in Austin and I'm just curious if it's better/easier/beneficial

mia

AA flies to HNL from both DFW and LAX. (They may also fly from other gateways, I don't know.) I used DFW as the gateway in this calculation because AA flies non-stop from New Orleans to Dallas, but not New Orleans to Los Angeles. Flying via LAX would add an extra segment for a traveler starting in New Orleans.

Starting from Austin would be different because AA does fly non-stop AUS-LAX.

KennyBSAT

AUS-LAX-HNL is 22,500 Avios, AUS-DFW-HNL is 24,500 in coach. From New Orleans DFW may be the only option.

JWEMTX

Thanks for the clarification

JWEMTX

We'll need to visit some family in Palm Springs so the AUS-LAX-HNL will be the way to go for us. Too bad I didn't learn about travel hacking sooner, we could have taken our twins before they turned 2 to save on miles.

MJH122

Thanks to everyone for the help and suggestions. At this point I am tempted to go with American. When I go to AMEX to look at the MR partners it looks like British Airways and possibly Asia Miles are the only two options to book AA. Am I correct? If there are other alliances which is the best option to get AA using MR? I looked at BA for some AA flights and it looks like there is only one seat for about 4-5 days, when I put in two seats it shows no availability.

mia

See post #3 of this thread. There are four Membership Rewards partners which can book travel on AA: Asia Miles, British Airways, Hawaiian, and Iberia. You should search for MileSAAver award availability on aa.com, then contact the partner airline to book.

You should also review the calculations in post #8 to understand that you do not have sufficient Membership Rewards points to book this trip in first class through BA.