I’m finally going to Kauai! After well over 100 visits to Maui, and dozens to Oahu, The Big Island, Lanai, and Molokai, Kauai was the only Hawaiian island that still eluded me. That ends this August! Talk is cheap, and all that “we’ll go there someday” is over; We’re ticketed and confirmed from San Jose to Lihue on Alaska Airlines, then returning home Maui to Sacramento. That leaves just one small thing left to take care of…how are we going to get from Kauai to Maui?
gcmap.com LIH-OGG
As many of you know, I like to paddle. In fact, crossing the channel between two Hawaiian islands on a stand up paddleboard is even on my bucket list. However, the 200 miles between Kauai and Maui is entirely out of the question. I guess that leaves Hawaiian Airlines. As a lifelong fan and former customer of Aloha, I will never fly Go! and I try my best to avoid Island Air. Luckily Hawaiian is partners with just about everyone on inter-island routes, so using miles to fly LIH-OGG would be fairly easy…or so I thought.
My first choice was to use Virgin America because it is only 3,000 points one-way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to book online and was quickly scared away by the $20 charge PER PERSON to book over the phone. I’m not saying I won’t ever use Elevate points on Hawaiian Airlines, I’ll just probablycontinue to save them for a bigger trip, say like to Tahiti.
With that option off the table, I knew that most of the other domestic carriers charge 5,000 each way/10,000 round trip for inter-island travel on Hawaiian. We have plenty of United miles, so once again MileagePlus saved the day! To put things in perspective, the 2,000 miles/points difference between the 3,000 point Virgin America ticket and the 5,000 mile United one, would only cost $15.80 worth of Vanilla Reloads using manufactured spend. That definitely beats paying $20 to ticket by phone. Even better than that- I can replenish those extra miles for FREE by buying PIN-enabled gift cards directly from Chase. I am however very cautious about using (and not abusing) this method. While it may be good for a free inter-island ticket or two, I don’t want to go TOO crazy and buy a ton of gift cards from the same bank that issues by credit card, for obvious reasons.
Using United.com to book travel on Hawaiian
A $94 ticket only cost me $2.50
All said and done, it took me about 10 minutes and $5 dollars to book our inter-island travel online at united.com. They didn’t offer as many flight choices as the Hawaiian website did, but we found what we were looking for and a flight time that worked perfectly…and the price was definitely right. Kauai here we come!
Now, if I could only find a hotel… 