Does Hawaiian allow you to choose your seat at the time of booking?
 

I thought I read something about no assigned seating. We have flown them in the past and were able to book seats...but maybe things have changed?

do you guys know?:confused:

Hawaiian does have assigned seating, at least that I experienced as an infrequent flier interisland. But I did not notice any option to choose during the booking process, it was only at online checkin that I saw there was a choice.

Maybe you can call reservations to choose seats, after booking. Or is there an online "my reservations" tool, where you input your record locator and can change seats?

minnie00, you may want to check the date on what you read. Hawaiian formerly had open seating, as did Aloha, but that was years ago. Hawaiian switched to assigned seating March 1, 2005, and you should be able to pick seats at time of booking (within reason, say, not more than a couple months out) now.

Sometimes, unless you have HA status or an HA Visa, you can't pick seats at booking. Why, I don't know.

Yeah, that's always been kinda weird.

Also, if you are booking a transpac flight, HA will only allow seat selection on seats common across all 3 767 types. HA has 3 different configurations each with a different amount of Y class seats so the maximum Y seats they can allow for assignment is something like 234 per flight. If the flight fills up beyond that then the website won't allow you to select seats. You would either have to call reservations and ask to see if they can assign you (sometimes it didn't work for me) or wait to day of departure and check-in. At least, that's what an HA staffer told me a while back.

And sometimes even with an HA Visa you can still be denied a seating assignment... It just depends on the loads.

I booked r/t SFO-HNL last week for travel right after ThxGiving and was able to pick coach seating assignments.

Don't know the innards of their booking system like above posters, as this is my first mainland-HI trip on this airline(just done a couple HNL-LIH trips in the past).

Actually, I found the website easy to navigate, and I got a very nice price, probably partly due to my travel dates.

I just purchased interisland tickets and was able to select seats at that time. The plane had almost every seat available though, so I don't know if it had to do with loads or not.

I also think I was able to select seats for my last flight with them 2 years ago.

Sometimes when doing OLCI for inter-island flights, the exit row is available. Sometimes not.

Menehune.

just booked tix and was able to choose seats without a problem.

thanks everyone !

We are using AA miles to book free tix on Hawaiian and I was able to pick middle seats...its a 2 3 2...and ALL the 2 side seating was held back unitl the airport :confused:
but when I go to buy the tix online and choose seats it shows a lot of them open to book. weird.

but...great thing is...we are going to Hawaii using miles...saving lots of cash. ;)

yes they do.

If you need any information or help in getting around hawaii just feel free to let me know. Are you flying to Oahu? or the other islands like Maui, kauai, big island etc?

I mostly fly interisland on Hawaiian but I am always assigned a seat with my reservation.