GRALISTAIR

yep exactly what I was thinking

LegalTender

Between sending out $100 vouchers with an email apology and an "all-hands-on-deck" response plan, which is cheaper?

tusphotog

I mean, how do people fly Alaska, United, American, Delta, Westjet, Air Canada etc across the pacific without wifi?

Often1

When you are on an island in the middle of the Pacific, who are you going to call? It isn't as though WN can dredge up help from elsewhere. On top of that, IRROPS handling can also be handled by phone as many carriers do. But, that doesn't remotely touch the real problem, e.g. lack of spare aircraft and crews.

This was thought through very well and WN had to know that it was a problem. It's just a risk it took and it has hit early on.

I suspect that people traveling on a leisure carrier to a leisure destination who arrive back from vacation a couple of days late, whether they received hotel vouchers or not, won't take this risk again. None of us know how the fares will shake out in the time to come, but it is safe to say that one of the things you purchase with a legacy carrier is redundancy.

Troopers

To be clear, $100 voucher received in OAK is in addition to the separate LUV voucher? Can you report back how much is the LUV voucher?

worldwidedreamer

Earlier this month I flew SFO-HNL-SFO on AS. Great service, and even got an upgrade to F there and Premium Y back. This said the wifi boinked out about 200 miles outside San Francisco.

WN intends to dominate the Hawaiian market, and will eventually have enough planes there so that IRROPs are not an issue. I'd be surprised if we did not see orders of magnitude more WN flights to the islands five years from now...

Often1

I would wait five years before booking in that case. Until WN ramps up its service to a minimum acceptable level, it will be a no go for many.

Mrp Alert

The LUV voucher was for $100. That is all I got. I did not receive anything in OAK, but was also told to run to my connecting gate rather than speak with CS there.

KissFlyGoodbye will have to clarify whether the tarmac rule was violated as (s)he was on the flight that ultimately canceled. We spent ~45 minutes in total on the plane before we pushed.

KissFlyGoodbye

Waiting now to board onto our Flight 8924. Today's flight from HNL to OAK consist of a 9:10, 12:55 and an 1:15. I suspect they added the 1:15 to accommodate the cancellation.

We returned to the gate within 3 hours (11ish is when we got back to gate), but sat at the gate till 3:20pm. Passengers were allowed to deplane, but not allowed to go back on. I stayed onto the plane the whole time.

The mechanics wanted to fix the guidance system. Management needed the plane to be at Oakland, but by 3:10 pm the pilot deemed it unsafe to proceed.

Issues

There was no way to rebook through a phone agent because we checked in a bag. The instructions given by the gate agent when we were on the cancelled flight instructed us to call, but with waiting to speak with someone in 30 mins, it was utterly useless. We had to wait for the few gate agents helping to rebook.

There clearly was no management for IRROPs here. No way to be able to effectively deplane if such an issue occurred (they had to check each individual ID and party in order to deplane). The instructions for the hotel voucher, accommodations, etc were not clear and literally printed on a white sheet of paper with a few sentences.

Whatever the MX issue was, the fact that the pilot had to call it unsafe to fly after 6 hours of a delay is incredible. Within the first two hours, the guidance or part issue was apparent. Nothing changed between 11am to 3pm for them to try and fix it. I can only assume upper management was trying hard to get that plane to OAK no matter what. 2 flight crews timing our and a cancellation, this was managed so poorly.

For $200 of a voucher for all of this and a waste of two days, it's almost not worth it (the $200 does not even cover a flight HNL - OAK.

It is apparent the WN did not have a concrete plan on executing IRROPs here in HNL. Good thing we were not connecting. For a majority of pax, a bit had connections and are in worse situations than us.

Rebooking

A lot of individuals connecting decided to purchase new tickets out of pocket on DL and UA that were departing the same day. I do not know what type of agreement they had with WN, but they were discussing how much they spent out of pocket for last minute tickets to get to LAX, DEN, PHX.

We were rebooked for next day at 1:15pm departure as we are terminating in OAK. We had to overnight regardless.

Accommodations, Food, Transport for the night

On a plain white sheet paper, there were three lines printed instructions of where we are staying, transport to and from airport, and that a voucher would be available for food at the hotel. Hotel was the Ala Moana. Voucher was for $14 per person, but if you have been in Honolulu especially at Ala Moana, $14 will buy you a children's dinner or a small salad. It was definitely not enough to eat on, especially the fact we were given only 2 servings of water while waiting from 9:10 AM till 3ish to be cancelled.

Travel voucher

There was a LUV voucher within hours of the cancellation for $200. There was an email with an executive number to call them. I did call them at the gate to get more information and whether that $200 can be increased due to the poor management of the whole situation. Agent did not budge.

buckeyefanflyer

krazykanuck

But that would cost money man...

rsteinmetz70112

I wonder how the passenger found this out?

garykung

Based on current WN operations at HNL, WN basically leaves no room for errors, which is so unlike from others, having tolerance for IRROPS.

While I am sympathetic to those encounter these IRROPS with WN, still I hate to say this - WN is not an airline you should choose flying to Hawaii, at least this moment.

UA - I sleep for most of the flight time. And then I still got a ETC for no WiFi.

Not going to happen when even HA does not dominate the market.

MSPeconomist

spongenotbob