Free First Class Next Month: Using Hawaiianair.com to Make Award Bookings

Hey there, you’re reading an outdated post! The updated series from March 2013 can be found here.

This is the twentieth post in a monthlong series. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go.

Hawaiianair.com is an important award search engine to use because Hawaiian Airlines has fantastic award availability. And Hawaiian is a partner of all four legacy carrier. The partnership varies from United’s, which only allows United miles to be used for interisland awards within Hawaii to American’s, which allows AAdvantage miles to be redeemed on all Hawaiian Airlines’ flights.

The first thing you have to do to be able to search Hawaiian’s availability is join HawaiianMiles. The link to join HawaiianMiles is in the top middle of the home screen. Once signed in, click Book an E-Award Now in the top right. This brings up several drop down menus for you to use when searching. I recommend searching segment by segment.

For instance, if you know you want to use AAdvantage miles to take advantage of its free stopovers for a trip from San Diego to Sydney with a free stopover in Honolulu, search for SAN-HNL availability then HNL-SYD availability.

If you want to book the Hawaiian flights you’re searching with another airline’s miles, the only space the other airline’s will have access to is Coach SuperSaver space and First Class Saver space. You’ll know whether the space is Coach SuperSaver or First Class Saver by comparing it to the prices on the Hawaiian Award Chart in those columns.

If you find the space you want for each segment, then you should note the flight numbers, classes, and times and call the airline whose miles you’re using to book.

The reason to use hawaiianair.com is because it is the only place that shows Hawaiian’s availability. Hawaiian has incredible availability, especially between Hawaii and the continental US and Hawaii and Australia. Hawaiian also has flights to way more mainland cities from Hawaii than any other carrier, a list that includes:

• Las Vegas
• Los Angeles
• New York-JFK
• Oakland
• Phoenix
• Portland
• Sacramento
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• San Jose
• Seattle/Tacoma