Airline travel to Hawaii

[Cruisin from NC]

Can NCL get better prices on air fare than I might be able to get? We are traveling to Hawaii in November 2016.

[FranknBeans]

Call NCL and get a quote then use Kayak.com and put in your dates and you'll alll sorts of flights also play around with your dates to see how pricing differs from weekday to weekends.

 

I know from Canada NCL is a no go, just to expensive.

[Merriem]

I found the best fares on google travel. You might want to check them out.

[NCMtnBoys]

Can NCL get better prices on air fare than I might be able to get? We are traveling to Hawaii in November 2016.

 

We're also sailing in Hawaii in November and I'm really frustrated with the pricing and hoping prices come down a bit. We live in Boone and have five different airports within 2-3 hours from us (Asheville, Johnson City, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh), and the prices out of all of them are higher than I'm hoping. I keep watching and have a price alert set up on Kayak. We booked our cruise through an online agency so I may end up contacting them to see if they have any airfare deals to go along with the cruise deal we got.

[littlelulu01]

We are west coast and travel to Hawaii a couple times a year. We use Alaska Airlines. The sign up bonus for the visa is typically enough for a rt fare and then they also give $99 companion fare each year for each card. We both carry the card for double the companion fares. I don't usually see better fares on other lines and if Alaska fares go down they will credit you the difference for future flights. It all depends on time of year but we can usually snag very inexpensive flights. Not sure if Alaska flies to your city but they do have non stop to HNL from SEA, PDX, ANC, LAX, SFO and most west coast cities. There are plenty of others that google flights should show you and I usually track on there as well.

[df5250]

We're traveling to HI in May from the east coast for our cruise with 200.00 airfare credit each. NCL quoted $1200 per person and we had to fly in/out the day of embarkation/debarkation. We booked independently for under $700 per person, and we can arrive/depart on our own schedule. I suspect the flight restriction was due to the airfare credit. We used Hopper app to track airfare. It told us when it dropped.

[Droop]

I agree with littlelulu with the Alaska airline. We use the same card but we only have it for just one of us which gives us a companion fair. The Annual fee on it is $75 but it more than pays for itself when the fairs are high. I'm not pitching the credit card but it does work well for us. You would have to find out where they are flying out of. I don't think they fly out of Johnson city but you can check for the others. If not I wish you well with finding a good rate. Like lulu we are from WA state as well but the price to fly to Hawaii still is pretty high depending on when you want to fly.

[GeezerCouple]

We're traveling to HI in May from the east coast for our cruise with 200.00 airfare credit each. NCL quoted $1200 per person and we had to fly in/out the day of embarkation/debarkation. We booked independently for under $700 per person, and we can arrive/depart on our own schedule. I suspect the flight restriction was due to the airfare credit. We used Hopper app to track airfare. It told us when it dropped.

 

We also like to select our exact flights (and routing if changes are required) and times of flights, and also to travel in at least one full day early.

This often involves repeated checking a variety of websites and travel agents, and also the cruise line.

 

For Hawaii, far in advance, we had reserved premium seats that could be refunded, figuring if we found anything better, we'd cancel and re-book.

And we wouldn't need to fret as the time got close, about whether the air seats would be getting sold out, given our back-up.

 

At final payment time, we had our TA contact NCL to see "what they could do for us".

They got us on the exact same flights, same class, for a significant discount.

And by the time of "final payment", we obviously knew we were indeed going,* so we were okay with paying for non-refundable tickets, both cruise and air.

[Yes, the non-refundable tix through NCL were less than any type of ticket prices we ever found for the premium tickets.]

 

* Alas, this was to be DH's first cruise, a major celebration, and the one we had to cancel due to a medical emergency less than 2 weeks before our departure date.

It was also a time we were very glad that we had finally taken out travel insurance.

We didn't need to grind our teeth about the significant costs lost... or the need to "pay again" to take that same trip in the future.

And IF the medical emergency had occurred just over 2 weeks later, the costs might have exploded. We now also get the annual policy for MedJetAssist.

[casofilia]

Be prepared for high prices for anything you book through NCL; Shorex, Hotels and Air Travel.

 

Mike

[Kattus]

We're traveling to HI in May from the east coast for our cruise with 200.00 airfare credit each. NCL quoted $1200 per person and we had to fly in/out the day of embarkation/debarkation. We booked independently for under $700 per person, and we can arrive/depart on our own schedule. I suspect the flight restriction was due to the airfare credit. We used Hopper app to track airfare. It told us when it dropped.

 

Yeah the NCL prices are usually going to be higher than what you can find on your own, and you don't know all the details of your flight until it gets closer to the date.

[punkincc]

Flying out of Chicago all the flights to Hawaii were either extremely expensive or involved very long flights with big layovers to get a lower price. The time change in Hawaii is enough to deal with without arriving already exhausted.

 

We used Hawaiian Airlines for our 2014 flight to Hawaii. We signed up for their card, flew a cheap Southwest flight to Phoenix, spent the night and boarded Hawaiian the next am for a 6 hour flight to Honolulu, arriving refreshed. We did the same in reverse coming home. I believe we paid less than $500 pp for the Hawaiian fare.

 

After only 1 roundtrip for each of us, we qualified for free flights home on this years trip. We are cruising to Hawaii on the POA from San Francisco on the 15th.

[TonyFred]

I feel lucky that we cruised Hawaii on the Pride of America back in 2006.

We got a balcony room with airfare from Memphis for 1400 a person.

[GeezerCouple]

Be prepared for high prices for anything you book through NCL; Shorex, Hotels and Air Travel.

 

Mike

 

We definitely expected NCL's quote for our premium airline tix to be higher than anything we could find ourselves.

 

No idea if it was the timing (almost exactly at final payment date), but when insisted our TA get a quote (she also thought it would be useless, price-wise), it turned out to be less than anything we could find.

 

Other than that one time, we've always found *everything* else to be MUCH less expensive when booked on our own.

 

For example, just look at the prices for the pre/post-cruise hotel, plus the cost of a shuttle or even private cab/car service.

It's usually much, much less to reserve it all on your own.

That's especially true for hotels, because NCL charges "per person", but we don't get two hotel rooms!

And the same for excursions. We've only booked once for a shore excursion from a cruiseline, when the vendor notified us that they cruiseline had a hold on the entire tour, and they wouldn't jeopardize their relationship with the cruiseline by accepting others.

(Usually, when this is happening, the exact time slot on the vendor's website isn't listed for the time the cruiseline has reserved.)

 

And when someone can gather a small group of others (even just 4 or 6), then the savings from a cruise tour is usually huge, and the service from a private tour is much nicer.

(We always do arrange it with *extra* time to be back at the ship, just in case...)