Flying to Hawaii is too expensive! NOT. According to sources such as Money Magazine, most who book online don’t take the time to look at more than two to three discount sites. It pays to take a bit more time and compare. Links to discount airfare Websites are listed at the end of this chapter.
Rates fluctuate from day to day so you might want to check back with all of these when you’re ready to book.
If you want to book right away, rather than wait to see if you can get one of those $200 or less fares with Hotwire, take a look at the Hawaiian based travel agency Panda Travel
I purchased from them at their office about 10 years ago when I lived on Oahu and recently rediscovered them online. Just to check it out (this was mid-June, 2005), I keyed into their system a request for booking information for a flight departing on Tuesday, October 4 and returning Wednesday Oct. 12. The fare, taxes included, for SFO-HNL roundtrip: $308. And LAX-HNL roundtrip: $302. I found the same rate for late September. Searching about 10 sites, this was the lowest of the fares I found for fall that could be purchased now (summer fares were sky high of course).
Checking again on August 24, 2005 Panda had very good discount airfares from the East Coast to Hawaii, such as $557 from New York, roundtrip. Unlike Hotwire.com you don’t save by waiting till the last minute.
In comparison to Panda’s October rates, CheapTickets.com’s lowest rate for the same timeframe (departing on the Oct. 4 and returning Oct. 12), LAX-HNL, was booking in June at $481, Expedia.com at $412, Orbitz.com at $356, and Priceline.com at $340.
Lots of people like Priceline because you can, using their trademarked “Name Your Own Price” feature, “bid” on a lower rate. Using these features requires the same flexibility as Hotwire.com in that you don’t know if the exact time of your flight until you purchase.
Travelocity.com is very popular. They have a nice feature where it will search fares within whatever time frame you specify. So in keeping with the above comparisons, I selected the same dates (again this is searching in June). The lowest fare was significantly higher: $543 roundtrip LAX-HNL.
Yet, I could book directly with my favorite airline for about $340 roundtrip ($169 one way) on the same day for the same flight days. However, I would wait to see if I could get another $178 roundtrip from LAX to HNL.
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