2017 Pualani Discounts
 

Anyone else notice the decrease in the Pualani coupons this year? $200 off for First class domestic is now $150. $1000 off International Business is now $750...And for Gold members, they don't even get a domestic F coupon, only an Interisland F coupon.

I guess they need to make cut-backs to pay for the $1M/plane retrofitting of the new lie-flats...

I don't understand why Hawaiian treats their FFP in such a loveless fashion. It has been demonstrated academically that FFPs are key to be more competitive, especially for airlines with strong dominance in one or two airports such as Hawaiian. (For example, see https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/49a...fde42744e4.pdf )

I noticed this too and was disappointed since I use both each year.

Anyone else get a Pualani Gold welcome letter with their Pualani Platinum Card and Luggage Tags? :confused:

Got my Platinum renewal letter, card, and tags last week. Interestingly, the cover letter categorized me as "Gold" (incorrect), while the tags were for Platinum (correct). This is strange, since I assume that the process of sending out these cover letters must be automated

Gold Letter with Platinum Tags
 

I did as well.

I got the gold letter, correctly, but no card or luggage tags this year. No problem, I'm not using the stack I already have, but a little surprising.

On the general issue of HA's indifference to its elites, I think there are a few reasons. First, the loyalty they seem to care about is from tourists flying them on regular trips to Hawaii and spending money on their credit card, not locals. Second, they know that a lot of locals will go for the local option regardless, so they don't need to provide any incentive beyond the name on the plane. And third, their management team seems to be a mix of very good and very mediocre, and I the loyalty program doesn't appear to get much attention from the good ones.

It is very interesting that you mention the contrast between the very good and the very mediocre executives. I hear this same theme from some HA flight attendants and pilots when I ask them about their perception of the company from the perspective of being an employee.

Then, I happened to sit next to one of HA's top executives In December and couldn't help but ask whether they as a group might be aware about how many of us elites feel. (I also told about my contrasting experiences with Alaska's FFP and other carriers like Etihad, Hainan, ANA, etc. After all, I am not certain of how many HA employees actually get to experience and fly the competition offerings regularly.) The answer was revealing. "I think that the management we have in charge of customer loyalty and some other areas are kind of really risk averse. US west coast airlines like Alaska and Southwest have a different management culture than us. Their attitude is, if it is not hurting anyone, then why not try something new ?" Hmmm.... so maybe behind the mediocre management in some areas there is a sense that the organization does not back you up if you are in charge of an area and try to change something and it does not immediately pay off? And so it is better to play it safe and just tweak instead of innovate and invent? I used to be a wannabe change agent in a culture with a similarly risk averse organization before and, oh boy, as a young and idealistic engineer it was one of the worst experiences of my career! Maybe in that case things can only improve if the "very good" make it their goal to swing HA's culture somehow.

There appears to be some truth to this, but it has to be seen in context. HA certainly is not risk-averse as a whole: Management exponentially expanded the airline, first into expanded foreign travel (requiring a large outlay of equipment A330s and human capital). Now, with the purchase of the a321NEOs, and associated human capital), they are ready to change their model to the West Coast.

A big factor that may have held down HA's entrepreneurship was the pilot's contract not being settled. There was a big unknown there.

There were some oddities to the expansion created by a "we don't need to do more" culture: Case in point being no lie-flats in F. They have finally woken up to the fact that customers want lie-flats, and they are now having to spend a lot of cash to retrofit previously purchased equipment. However, they still insist on 2-2-2, while a lot of their competition is going 1-2-1. (so, on the domestic side they are better than UA's new 2-4-2 product, but worse than AA and DL).

Their FF program finally made me switch my travel almost exclusively to UA. On UA, I get confirmed "economy comfort" seats at purchase, free F if available, an inventory of saver awards, and the ability to use accumulated miles to actually purchase award seats to basically everywhere in the world with little hassle.

Capitalism and choice is great.

This is only the case for flights past the west coast. And even then things are pretty inconsistent. I haven't flown to DFW with AA in a while, so not sure what product they're sending out here now. But before, there was no guarantee of getting the 1-2-1 full lie flat 767. Plenty of times they sent the 2-2-2 semi lie flat one. And there were frequently last minute swaps as well.

Once HA finishes refitting their cabins, the competition is going to have to seriously up their game if they want to have anything comparable to the west coast. HA is going to have full lie flats, everyone else is going to have crappy domestic recliner seats on narrowbodies. This will continue to be true even after HA starts flying narrowbodies to the west coast (which will presumably have recliner seats) since they are going to keep doing A330s to the flagship markets.

I love flying HA from the mainland to Hawaii. The planes are better than AA's 757s and the service is excellent. However, I fly to Hawaii once a year -- occasionally twice in a year. I just can't justify collecting HA miles at this point, since I can't credit them to any of my carriers of choice (AA or AS). The last straw was upping the minimum miles needed to transfer to Hilton Honors. That left me with no viable option to actually use HA miles in a timely fashion.

Post-April, there'll be lie flats on all 777s flying to/from LAX and SFO from HNL on UA and DL has had the 767 with lie flats on the HNL-LAX route.

Ah yes I forgot about the DL 767 that continues to NGO. Didn't realize that about the UA 777s though. That's great news, always good to have more lie-flat options available.

That makes the assumption that the 330's continue to fly to the west coast and they don't start replacing them with the 320neo at a higher rate.

I could see them leave the 330 for JFK LAX and LAS and I could totally see the neo's do 3x PDX with one to Maui for example.

The point is that we know they will continue to at least some west coast markets. The key is cargo, the narrowbodies just won't be able to replace the A330s here. LAX, SFO, and SEA at the very least will probably keep their 330s. The narrowbodies will mainly be for replacing the 767 and doing more nonstops to neighbor islands. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they replaced the 330 for PDX and SAN.

the last few times I flew to/from SAN, those 330s were full.