America West FlightFund (Discontinued Program) - Redeem FlightFund miles to SYD on HA!

FlightFund miles are now redeemable to SYD on HA.

Begins March 2, 2005.

Redeem your FlightFund miles for travel to Sydney, Australia on Hawaiian Airlines (http://www.americawest.com/flightfund/myffaccount/redeemingmiles/ff_australia.htm)

I am so amazed this is happening. :) Slowly they are building more alliances for flightfund. Now if only we could get another airline to recognize our elite status. :rolleyes:

This is great news. However, at 200k for HA F, the price is steep. If time isn't an issue, a better value would be to redeem a BA F seat to HKG or SIN for 220k then buy a Y seat down to SYD. A VS suite award to HKG goes for 140k.

Slowly they are building more alliances for flightfund.

Yes, this closes the Australia hole in FF. Now they need to work on closing the South American gap.

As mentioned from an earlier thread, its nice that HP FF members can earn/redeem miles for SYD flights on HA via HNL. However, the departure/arrival times to do not coordinate very well for connecting paxs from PHX or LAS and most other HA West Coast markets causing overlaps. Forcing paxs to stay in HNL a least day (which is not necessary a bad thing). I believe HA has the HNL to SYD departing HNL around 1:30pm (ish) meanwhile the flight from PHX/LAS to not arrive HNL until after 3pm. Even flights from LAX, PDX, SEA, SFO, SMF, SAN arrive HNL within 30 minutes or so prior to HNLSYD flight departure. This would be an "illegal" connection and HA could not book paxs with such tight connections especially that involves international travel. The returning SYDHNL flights arrive back to HNL around 11:30 am or so and again creating overlaps or very long layovers. Although, HA does fills its SYD flights on local Hawaii traffic. Obviously, they do not depend on connecting flights from the West Coast to make it work. Furthermore, flying to Hawaii from the West US mainland to connect to SYD is out of the way even if HA makes connections times coordinate better from the West. Hopefully, HP will get HA to makes the connection times better. However, if HP should start Hawaii service next year, I seriously doubt HA will do HP any favors.

On a separate but related subject, HP and QF started codesharing out of LAX going to/from on PHX and YEG on HP flight on QF Australian flights. I was told through an HP employee that if a passenger belongs to the QF frequent flyer members can earn/redeem flights for HP codeshare flights going to PHX/YEG markets from LAX in conjunction to flights to Australia. However, HP FF members cannot earn/redeem flight on QF flights. I think its a unbalanced codeshare arrangements. Why have it does not really benefit FF members.

I confirmed with Flight Fund that in addition to the award travel options, you can also now earn HP Elite Qualifying Miles when flying HA to SYD (on a qualifying fare, of course -- no H or K fares).

That's right about 8,000 miles one-way (PHX-HNL-SYD) albeit with very poor connections both ways and a loooooong time on a HA 767, in either class of service.

That's a 16K mileage run, folks!