Hawaiian Airlines has two bits of news out this week, both good news for customers who enjoy heading west or south from the islands. The carrier is increasing service on one of its newest routes and has added a partner to increase onward connectivity in Asia.
First up is the additional weekly frequency to Brisbane. The Honolulu-Brisbane route was launched just over a year ago and the yields have apparently been strong enough to justify the additional service. The fourth weekly flight takes effect on 31 March 2014.
Next up is the announcement that Hawaiian has partnered with China Airlines to offer bidirectional codesharing on a significant number of routes and also frequent flyer reciprocity for both earning and redemption. The earning and redemption rates are not particularly spectacular. On the redemption side the chart for Hawaiian Miles for travel on China Airlines looks like this:
Those rates look a bit scary, really, without context. Putting them in context by comparing to the rates Delta charges for SkyMiles awards on similar routes operated by China Airlines doesn’t help much. Taiwan – Europe would be 90k/120k using SkyMiles compared to the 100k/200k numbers here. Australia or New Zealand will run you only 70k/110k with SkyMiles. The rates are also worse than those available using Hawaiian Airlines on other partners. Both Korean and ANA have overlapping regions in the charts and the rates on those two are better than booking on China Airlines.
On the earning side there are a number of China Airlines fare classes which do not earn at 100% in the Hawaiian program:
And, while obliquely mentioned, the chart does not explicitly state that there are additional revenue buckets below N which earn nil in the Hawaiian Miles program. Not so great at all. That said, there are a couple buckets, namely K & M, where earning is better on this chart than on Delta’s.
More options is a good thing, to be sure, but the overall rates simply aren’t that great. Then again, the opportunities available with Hawaiian Miles rarely are.
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In addition, HA also has announced Honolulu – Beijing service from mid-April 2014. HA now has flights to Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Quite a few data positions open at Hawaiian now, either they’ve had some turnover or they’re expanding.
@david HA discontinued their flight to MNL this past summer.