Flew Hawaiian San Diego to Honolulu with a brand new surf board. Paid extra for special handling. I didn't realized that special handling meant seeing how far baggage handlers could throw your board. Long story short, even the fully padded bag couldn't protect the board. Hawaiian sent me a long legal description that basically said "Screw you buddy, we don't care."
Good luck if you fly them with a surfboard.
BD
Bob D.
Horrible affiliate gaps in responsibility
In march this year I made airline reservations for 2 of us to fly Hawaiian Airlines from PDX (Portland) to Honolulu in September. I used my Wells Fargo CC points and paid cash for one seat and 2 upgrades for more room and advanced check-in. In May I received a notification through Wells Fargo Rewards that our flight had been changed. All of the attached flight info for the new flights indicated that our seat upgrades had been carried over. However, when I logged on to Hawaiian Airlines site to check, we literally had no assigned seats. I actually had to pay for the upgrades again to lock in our seating. Again, in July, I received another notice of flight change, to which I sent the approval reply. The flight was now scheduled for 7:55 am which I absolutely did not want to deal with. I logged on once again to verify my twice-paid for upgrades and they again did not show. I paid for the seats we wanted yet again (they were not as good as the ones we lost), and at that point i was compelled to contact Hawaiian Airlines to have them explain why I was being overcharged for the same flight. The answer was "we do not manage or cannot touch 3rd party bookings". To be fair, I got the same answer from Wells Fargo, that they can't touch information on the Hawaiian Airlines system. However, what really wound me up was that the Hawaiian agent refused to look up my flight, and they failed to acknowledge that my newly assigned confirmation code was not a 3rd party code, but a Hawaiian code, and that ALL of the incurred over-charges hit my credit card as coming from Hawaiian Airlines.
I have flown Hawaiian Airlines many times in the past, mainly in the 70's and they were wonderful. As of today they are as horrible as Frontier. I will not fly Hawaiian Airlines again
JO
Jo
The worst airline I have ever flown in…
The worst airline I have ever flown in 50 years of flying. Abused by a stewardess onboard. Rude, aggressive and a safety threat. No response from their CEO or their customer service department. Avoid at all costs.
FW
Felicity W.
Worst service / airline processes and…
Worst service / airline processes and experience ever… flying back from Hilo to Sydney. Arrived at the airport over 2 hours early. Checked luggage… then had to wait for security. No mention when I checked that one of the machines was down and the wait was over 3.5 hours to get through the scanner… Meant missed flight, then missed connecting flight. To my surprise the “machine hadn’t just gone down”… it had been down for a few days… They could have prioritised it being fixed, text passengers to let them know arrive 4 hours ahead to allow time to get through security (due to only one bag scanner).
They then also lost my luggage - which I later managed to track down a few days later thanks to the apple AirTag.. - not the Hawaiian staff who had no idea where it was.
Only flew with Hawaiian to get points as a partner airline to Virgin Australia.
Needed to do a claim for insurance on extra costs incurred from this issue (connecting flights and hotels not connected with this booking)… extra costs included $500 … wrote in feedback and complaints several times to all channels and ZERO response.
Points also never came through even though they had my number, submitted claim through virgin with details and to Hawaiian. Seriously most incompetent service at all levels. Seriously would AVOID flying with airline this incompetent at basics.
AS
Andy S.
Worst staff attitude and nothing is…
Worst staff attitude and nothing is good about them. Food cabin cleanliness all worst you can experience.
HZ
Heath Z.
-5⭐️
I booked two nonstop flights out of Vegas to OGG. Hawaiian does not fly to NY so we booked with southwest out of Buffalo (also a non stop to avoid any issues). Being that I still have some residual effects from my last surgery and my husband has long lasting issues due to a motorcycle accident we had to break up the flights with an overnight in Vegas as neither one of us can physically handle 17+ hrs on planes and through airports. Also gave us time if in the event a flight was delayed or cancelled we would still be able to make our flight. Unfortunately southwest did cancel our flight out of Buffalo. And after spending $1200 more to try and make our flight in Vegas with Hawaiian Airlines a delay with delta prevented that from happening. So when I was certain we would not make that flight I called Hawaiian to let them know we wouldn’t make our flight and that I was releasing the tickets so they were available to someone in the event they had an emergency or to just resell to other customers. The rep I spoke with was incredibly rude and unhelpful. Her only response was “I can not make changes to your reservation” and she must have mentioned 3 times in our brief 3min call that the southwest cancellation was not their problem. Which I’m totally aware of I was just informing her as to why we were unable to make our flight. I also know my tix were not refundable, I was not asking for a refund I simply called to release the tickets however I did ask if she could possibly give us a waver on one check bag but after mere seconds into the conversation I already knew she was not going to be helpful whatsoever. Anyway after she repeatedly stated she “can not make changes to our reservation” I said fine just leave it as is then I guess but I told her we are still flying into OGG the following day and will need our return flights home. Again she said “I can not make changes to your reservation”. My response that’s fine I don’t wish to change anything just making sure our return flights are intact.
I had plenty of time to let the hotel/car rental place know we would be arriving late and after the conversation with the Hawaiian Airlines rep the night before I figured I better touch base with them again just to be sure everything was on the up and up with our return flight. So I opened up a chat with Hawaiian Airlines, it took forever to get an actual human. The first time I gave up because it said connecting you with an agent and nobody ever responded. I during two layovers I attempted several times to call the 1800 line and got busy signals, what sounded like a fax line, completely bizarre. Double and triple checked the number and I was called the correct one. Even though tapped it directly on the webpage. So attempted the chats again and the one individual I chatted with told me my return flights were no longer valid (even tho when I went on the website it said that they were) but I just wanted to be sure being we were 1/3 of the way around the world from home.
At this time I was just exhausted and our last leg of the flight had no Wi-Fi so I was unable to continue communication with Hawaiian.
The following morning I called and got the same busy signals. So I opened another chat. This time the rep said my return flights were good. But because the first rep had told me that they were no longer valid I still wanted to speak to an actual human. So I attempted to call over and over the next few days with no success. We then decided to go to the airport (over an hour one way from our accommodations) to verify our return flights were valid. I get to the counter and the gentleman spent over a half hour typing away, he went and got a lady, she too was looking at our itinerary (on their computer, I could not see what they were looking at to see why it took so long to verify these flights. 45 min after I got to the counter a completely different person comes up and says “they are fine” I tried to explain the issues I had and offered to show the screenshots of the correspondence with Hawaiian via chat and he was not interested whatsoever. His name was Thomsdun. I asked him to give me something to ease my mind that these were valid flights, a printout with his signature and his name if something were to go wrong I had something to fall back on (as we are nearly half way around the world). He refused and his time was very rude and dismissive, told me he doesn’t do that and I had to call reservations. Getting through to reservations at the time was impossible! He was aware of this or he should be as he was mgmt. tried to call got the busy signal. I opened a chat (repeatedly called while waiting for a human min chat and finally got through on the phone) So had chat open while on a call. One rep said tix were good the other said they were not. I could not bank on such incompetence and ultimately had to rebook and pay for new flights home! This incompetence stole 5 days of my trip
AA
aaron
Everything that is bad about an airline…
Everything that is bad about an airline is summed up as Hawaiian Airlines. To this day they have not responded to my email complaint although they've acknowledged it.
So we thought we would try out this airline from a fight from Oahu to Maui - No issues there as it was about 20 minutes! But our return flight from Maui to Seattle was awful. Whilst waiting to taxi for takeoff one of the ceiling panels popped open above my seating area, above the overhead storage units. The Captain had to come over and started banging at it to try and force it back in. He succeeded but he wasn't prepared to call for an engineer to see if it was safe, presumably because he wanted to leave on time.
The entertainment system didn't work at all. Initially an announcement advised they would need to perform a system reboot and would take about 30 minutes. Nothing changed. When I spoke to one of the crew they advised me it would take 30 minutes but still nothing. So for 6 hours we had no entertainment system and no apology at all. Very boring flight.
My seat was also very uncomfortable with most of the bottom and back padding worn out. It wasn't until we landed that we I stood up the bottom section of my seat came off which explained why it was so uncomfortable. But in an emergency I would have flown forward. We had a screaming kid throughout (thank goodness for ear plugs!) and whilst the kids parents managed to sleep through it it was very annoying for the rest of us as it was a red eye flight. Cabin crew did nothing (appreciate it is difficult to calm down a kid but if the parents are asleep and ignoring it why should the rest of us suffer for their selfishness. They could have stayed awake to help their kid calm down!)
The really annoying thing was at the beginning (and at landing in Seattle) the entertainment screens showed commercials for their airline! How frustrating was that! Avoid these guys and go with Delta or Alaska (Delta are good from my experience but Alaska I dunno but can't be worse than Hawaiian)
AJ
Andrew J.
If I could score zero
If I could score zero - I would! This is the worst worst worst experience I have ever had! Never ever ever fly with them.
We paid for first class tickets - both lounges close at 6 00pm even though they have flights through to midnight. Nothing to eat or drink for anyone. Appalling.