Hawaii-based Airlines - Excellent Service on HA

A couple weeks ago I was on my way back to SFO from ITO via HNL and LAX (flying HA ITO-HNL and UA HNL-LAX-SFO). The interisland flight was booked on a different itinerary than the flights to the mainland, and we were relieved when HA had no trouble checking our bags through to SFO. As everyone knows booking flights on different reservations can lead to disasters if you're delayed and you miss your connection, so we booked a 2 hour connection in HNL. Also, as everyone knows you're only likely to be delayed when it's most inconvenient. (And that's what happened!)

We were scheduled to fly HA341 from ITO - HNL. Just after pushing back from the gate, the captain announced that there were some mechanical issues (something about a warning light that went off when they reset the system, but that they needed to check on) and we were going to have to back to the gate and deplane until the mechanic could look at it, and it should only be 15-20 minutes. After unloading, the announcement was made that it would be over an hour before the flight would be able to leave since a mechanic had to be flown in from Honolulu. (Is this standard practice?)

As you can imagine there were hordes of angry travelers, all wanting to be put on standby on the next flight. I was expecting chaos, but ______ (I didn't get her job title -- Gate Agent? Supervisor? Station Director?) took excellent control of the chaos, first prioritizing passengers connecting to international and mainland flights based on the time of their connecting flight. I thought we were going to get screwed, since we weren't connecting to a HA flight, and that they would prioritize solely passengers continuing on HA. So I was pleasantly surprised when we were called up and given seats on the next flight out, which was scheduled to arrive about 40 minutes before our connecting flight. Plus, they told us that they would try to have a van waiting for us to shuttle us to the other end of the airport.

Sitting in row 26 on a completely full HA 717 is not ideal, but at least we had seats. They asked for volunteers on board to give up their seats to accommodate passengers that were connecting on to SFO (offering a free interisland ticket (o/w or r/t, I don't remember)), and we ended up departing only a few minutes late. When we landed in HNL, we were trying to plan out how to get from one end of the airport in the ~30 minutes we'd have before our flight. As we were deplaned, they made an announcement asking us to check with the agent immediately after getting off the plane. Sure enough, this agent led us to a van that was waiting for just the two of us, and we were whisked across the airport in no time.

When we knew we were going to be delayed in Hilo, we checked in to our United flights online. We couldn't print boarding passes, but we figured being checked in meant our seats were probably less likely to be given away. As soon as we got to the gate, we waited in line for a United agent at the gate to ask for a boarding pass:

Me: "Hi, we need to pick up our boarding passes. We checked in online, but weren't able to print them."

UA Agent 1: "WHY ARE YOU SO LATE!?!? Your flight leaves in 25 minutes."

Me: "Uh, our Hawaiian Airlines flight was late?"

UA Agent 1 grumbles.

UA Agent 1 to UA Agent 2: "Were you calling duncf earlier?"

UA Agent 2 to UA Agent 1: "I was, but not anymore."

UA Agent 1 glares at us and gives us our boarding passes.

I never got an explanation of what they were calling us for before; maybe they wanted to put us on the SFO flight that was leaving the next gate 20 minutes later (which would have gotten us in hours earlier), or maybe they wanted to Op-Up me (I'm only 2P, but I can dream...), but the whole adventure put UA's crappy service in perspective. HA took a bad situation and did everything they could to turn it around and get us where we were going on time including personally driving us across the airport. UA scolded us for being late due to no fault of our own.

Given the choice, I'll fly HA again.

Sounds like HA handled it very well! Generally, HA flights are on-time and there's no need to worry about a connecting flight in HNL. But it's good to know that there are some great GAs out there that take care of connecting pax when an issue arises.

(Please leave the agents' names out, to respect their privacy, though I highly suggest you write in to HA and include the agents' names so that they can be properly praised for their efforts!)

Since UA had no idea where you were, the agents were correct in asking why you were late. However, it is nice when the agents are professional about the exchange -- no need for glaring or grumpiness.

Since UA had no idea where you were, the agents were correct in asking why you were late. However, it is nice when the agents are professional about the exchange -- no need for glaring or grumpiness.

Yeah, the problem wasn't that she asked why we were late, it was that she asked it in a tone of voice that sounded like my grade 3 teacher in sort of an accusatory tone... And I'm not sure it was really warranted, other than missing boarding passes, we were ready to board in plenty of time. We certainly weren't holding up the flight.

My main point in bringing that up was that it was quite the contrast between HA and UA. :-)

Good thing you weren't flying HA out of OGG. You would have seen UA type service at it's worse plus had you gotten "uppity" with the GA's they would probably have called security on you. OGG gives HA a consistently horrible reputation.