This looks great! I have 2 questions. If you go through and get the 50,000 points, and I look at the one way points, can I assume if I choose the Supersaver that the 50,000 points would cover the entire roundtrip flight? Second question, would you also be able to use the 50% off companion fare?
Thanks for the great info!
I'll try best to remember my experience but I don't want to steer anyone wrong with inaccurate information, so you should absolutely contact Hawaiian Airlines' customer service reps with any questions that are specific to your situation.
I believe award travel is based on your travel dates, route, and fare availability. So for example, I've been casually searching for award fares from SFO<->HNL during the holidays, but didn't get any results for some dates that would work for us. I found a lot of availability in September for 40,000-50,000 miles round trip.
HawaiianMiles can only be used to book Hawaiian flights. So if your itinerary includes flying Southwest or JetBlue (or some other carrier) from your home airport to an airport that Hawaiian services, that search might not pull up award travel, and you may have to search for and book the legs separately, which could complicate layovers and baggage handling.
Like I've posted, I recall the companion fare discounts come with a lot of restrictions. The 50% companion fare discount only works for a round trip Hawaii <-> Mainland ticket. Also, I think the primary ticket can't be paid for with miles, and has to be paid in cash/credit. This could suck if it's just two people traveling, because you have to choose to use your miles, or pay cash to get the companion discount. If this is your situation, you may want to just use the 50% off companion discount now, charge the balance to the Hawaiian card, and bank all those miles for a future trip. ***But check with Hawaiian Airlines to be sure.***
We're a family of 3, so what my wife and I do is book one of our tickets separately with miles, and then book the other parent's ticket together with our DD using cash and the companion discount. We try to book as close in time as possible so we can select seats next to each other.
One benefit of being a Hawaiian Airlines credit card holder is you can receive miles transfers from any HawaiianMiles member. My wife is the primary cardholder and a HawaiianMiles member. I have just a HawaiianMiles number, but I use it on my flight reservations to earn almost 5,000 miles on a round trip flight and to transfer Amex Membership Reward points to, then I transfer all my miles to my wife's account when we're ready to book. I believe you can set up a HawaiianMiles account for minors, as well, so the kids can also earn miles that you can eventually pool together to redeem.
Fair warning, some of my recollection may be fuzzy because we (usually my wife since she ends up with all the miles) book about once a year for our almost annual trips to Hawaii. We haven't booked this year's trip so my memory's not as fresh. Hope this helps!