complete HA fail HND-KOA
 

Greetings,
First real time flying HA last Sunday HND-KOA. I usually fly Delta and am a Diamond member with them. Fly about 250k/year....so not a newbie. Due to timing I had to fly HA from HND-HNL connecting in KOA. Just seeing if I just caught them on a bad day or this is the norm. Arrived at the gate an hour before scheduled departure...plane was there but I have no idea how long it had been there. 30 minutes before scheduled departure the boarding time changes on the monitor...no announcement. Now scheduled to board 5 minutes before scheduled departure. Board in no hurry and of course take off about 50 minutes late. I figured as no announcement was made about being late that HA pads its schedule much like Delta so we would make our connection(scheduled 1:48 connection time). Woke up from a snooze to notice on the screens we are expected to land 20 minutes bfore my connection was to leave. I have global entry but I knew there was no chance to make that. NO announcement from the crew. Get to KOA and boarding door opens everyone rushes to the door when a gate agent gets on telling us we are late and to let the people with connections off first.....bit too late for that as everyone is up.
Breeze through immagration and customs in about 20 minutes and exit the tent. Much to my dismay there is not a single HA representative in site. Ask an employee who says wait here and a bus will bring us to main ticket area. I am familiar with KOA and knew it was about a 5 minute walk to I just walked there with my bags. Get into the customer service line before the bus with the other 100 people get in line. Agent is completely clueless....says she booked on the next flight which leaves in 5 minutes? Still have to recheck my bag and get through security. Said not going to happen. She then spends 20 minutes trying to rebook me and finally gives me a card to fly standby? Seems like all the agents were surprised that the Airbus 330 was late and all these people missed their connections. Seems like they had over 9 hours to figure this out? How is this possible?
Take my seat request card and get through security as I knew the current agent could not help. Get to the gate and ask the agent if I can get on a flight to HNL...she says the one leaving in 30 minutes has a seat and confirms me? Why couldn't the gate agent do this? Get to HNL and my bags get there 2 hours later!
Is HA operations really this bad? They had to know we were all late and you think they could have been pro active in rebooking people. Why was there nobody at the exit of customs to help people? Talked to many in the same noat as me and all were frustrated. Why no announcements in Tokyo or on the plane? I know I am spoiled as a Diamond on Delta as they would have rebooked me, called me and told me what flight I was on. I am curious as I have some more travel I was going to book on HA and this make me rethink that. Everyone can have a bad day...so is this the norm or just a fluke? Thanks

HA is a mixed bag and Kona ground staff handles mostly O/D, so what happened to you isn't characteristic of the operation overall but not surprising for the situation you were in. Ops are generally very solid interisland and my impression is that they're doing a lot of things right on the longer hauls, but I wouldn't count on their doing well with anything complicated, and customer service on the ground ranges from outstanding to pretty bad.

Not really a fluke. They just don't handle late flights well - fortunately, it doesn't happen often with HA.