Originally Posted by
MatthewLAX
So even now you are still getting upgrades? I thought cabins were filling up early with paid J traffic.
Originally Posted by
HNLbasedFlyer
Since Oct 2020 (when Hawaii dropped mandatory quarantine) of the roughly 50 segments over water - I've gotten upgraded all of them except twice - and the 2 segments I bought up were for $350 which brought the total price far less than buying F and far far far less than buying F outright on Hawaiian. My next flight HNL-LAX on Jul 18 at 8:55pm still has 8 open seats - so looking good but monitoring each day. For the LAX-LAS or SFO-LAS upgrades are probably 2/3 - but don't really care about those.
Hawaii traffic seems down again. We booked last minute (<24 hours) to OGG 4th of July weekend and I was upgraded at purchase on AS SFO-OGG on the outbound. Then our return on AS had a lengthy mechanical so I rebooked on AA OGG-PHX, where both of us got upgrades purchasing about three hours prior to departure. Was also looking at UA OGG-SFO, which was P2 and PZ1 about four hours prior to departure. Total RT fare was under $500.
Hotel rates may have something to do with demand - prices in Wailea were absolutely insane ($1200+ for Marriott or Andaz, both of which had lots of availability for the holiday weekend and felt relatively empty when we walked through).