Originally Posted by
SEA1K4EVR
Another option... you appear to be on the last nonstop of the day to HNL. UA has another nonstop (on most days anyway) leaving at ~4:20pm. You could pay $50 and go standby on the earlier flight.. if you do just be sure you tell the agent at checkin you're doing standby so they can correctly tag your bag.
^+1
Depending on the speed of BA checked luggage delivery (no experience here), this should be eminently do-able. Five extra hours in paradise is worth a little stress spent hustling to the earlier flight (and 5 hrs in Oahu is slightly better than mass transit to and back from In-N-Out
).
The reason I think you can do this is that non-US immigration lines shouldn't be too busy at 2:30 and security lines to get back into airside should be reasonable at 3 pm. It will be a wee hike from intl arrival to the high-80 domestic UA gates but you'll need the walk by then anyway and compared to transiting LHR it's not far at all.
If you have OneWorld status you can use the AA premium line once in T3 domestic (contiguous security space with UA) but the extra 5 min walk to get there from Intl terminal might offset the shorter wait in queue.