ajf87

I recently flew to LIH (I'm an essential worker) with a connection in HNL, round-trip (four flights). The first leg I was correctly given two segments, but for the return journey it only counted as one segment. When I inquired online with one of their CSRs she referred me to a chart (https://hawaiianair.custhelp.com/app...les-on-flights) and claimed that all inter-island connections counted as one segment (even though the chart clearly says only connections to/from Lanai and Molokai on Ohana count as one), and "that's the way we do things now." Am I missing something? It's been over a week since I escalated this (she wouldn't connect me with a supervisor) and haven't heard back yet. Each flight I've taken with Hawaiian has counted for one segment, that's how I've always been credited elite segments. Am I missing something here or did I luck out with a bad CSR? Am I mistaken?

WrightHI

My recollection is that they've always awarded just one segment for neighbor island to neighbor island connection via HNL. I just checked and that's what I got the last time I had that sort of connection, last October. It ticked me off the first time it happened, years ago, but then I just wrote it off as one more way that HA shortchanges locals. You're right, though, that the chart you linked appears to say what you said it says, so I dunno.

Edit after looking again at the HA website: I think the language about "*Connecting flights for inter-island travel would be considered as 1 segment" is general as to all interisland connections. If you look at the line below with double asterisks, there's no double asterisk above that it could be a footnote for, and the same is true of other sections of the page. Best guess is that they screwed up the formatting and meant to put a footnote somewhere stating the LNY and MKK routes are flown by Empire, but they forgot the footnote and also used asterisks to set off general qualifying language that they probably should have bulleted.

HNLbasedFlyer

Was the return the same flight number for both segments?

ajf87

No I had two flight numbers.

hawaii777

Not sure if it's still the same now, but a LONG time ago when this happened to me, I was told that if the fare was constructed as a single fare from ITO to LIH (for example) with a connection in HNL, I would get credit for 1 segment. If it was actually constructed as 2 separate fares (ITO to HNL as 1 fare and HNL to LIH as another fare - even if I didn't specifically build the search that way) that would result in a 2 segment credit. I would think it would be hard to find a situation where buying 2 separate fares would have been the cheapest way for the system to fare the overall route, but who knows. This was back in the days of go! when there were $19 tickets, so I guess it was possible

ajf87

UPDATE: Hawaiian credited me with two segments for the two flights. However my most recent KOA-LIH trip was only counted as one segment each way for elite qualifying purposes, despite being four flights. Going to test my luck and complain again since I'm only two away from gold.