Hawaiian Airline fare rule questions
 

Hi everyone. a rookie here. I just learned how to read the fare rule recently. I found SFO-PEK (one-way) flight at around $270 in Dec 2018. The Fare rule says:

From what I understood, I should be able to have 2 stopovers, 1 in HNL and 1 in OGG, with an extra $100. SFO-HNL, HNL-PEK gives me a similar price. However when I searched SFO-OGG, OGG-HNL, HNL-PEK, the price skyrockets. I think I didn't break the day/time/seasonal restriction either. What might be wrong? Thanks guys :)

btw the fare rule also says "TICKETS MUST BE ISSUED ON/BEFORE 31JAN 18." Is this fare good enough to book that early? I look forward to try HA though since I haven't before.

It seems that the more complicated itineraries may require a call to HA to make the reservations. Unfortunately, that may incur a phone reservation fee. Have you tried one of the booking sites (travelocity or expedia). Their booking engines may be more sophisticated than HA's website.

While I find HA's flight attendants friendly and the Hawaiian-themed atmosphere on the plane soothing, I'm not sure if HA's service is going to be overly impressive. It's probably better than other US carriers, but may not be as good as some Asian carriers.

Thank you very much for your reply! After some searching I guess it may be that the booking class O is not available in these combinations. All SFO-OGG; OGG-HNL; HNL-PEK flights I found are with different booking classes, which makes the original fare basis OLXOPK not available.

I actually found sth more interesting. (too bad I couldn't post screenshots though) The original flight I found is SFO-PEK with a layover in HNL for $278. Fare basis is OLXOPK. It works on 12/4, 12/6, 12/9 and some other dates in November (but doesn't work after 12/9). When I search SFO-HNL; HNL-PEK (stopover in HNL since it is permitted by the fare rule OLXOPK), in Expedia and several other OTAs I am able to find flights around $300, which is similar to the original SFO-PEK flight. These OTAs don't show fare basis, but I assume it is also OLXOPK.

However, when I search it on ITA matrix and the Hawaiian airline official website, the price (with the same fare basis OLXOPK) skyrockets to ~$800. From my understanding, adding a stopover without changing the fare basis should only cause a ~10% price increase due to taxes. Why does the price goes to nearly 3X here without changing the fare basis? And why couldn't ITA matrix find the price I found on Expedia?

Found the answer by myself after some research in the forum......it triggers a thing called "HIP Rule". For those of you who haven't heard of this like me: when flying A-B; B-C (B as a stopover), if the price of either A-B and B-C is higher than that of A-B-C (without stopover), the total price will be replaced by the higher one without changing the fare basis. In my case, both SFO-HNL and HNL-PEK is more expansive than SFO-HNL-PEK (funny:)), so HIP rule is triggered. The final price I saw on HA website and ITA is similar to that of the HNL-PEK fare. Expedia for some reason didn't do the HIP check (yeah).