flight to Hawaii from Illinois?
 

Just how does one locate an economical flight to Hawaii? I am looking at family of 4 flying either March 19 - 23 or June 2 - June 9 2007 and am finding airfare consistantly over $700. We can fly out of Indy or Chicago. Any tricks to getting there for less??

My strategy is usually to check travel.yahoo.com and search for lowest fares (not by date). That gives me an idea of which airline will give me the lowest rate. Then I keep an eye on that airline's website for sales. Good luck! %%-

If you must go with those dates, you might try entering your travel dates on Orbitz's Fare Tracker...it will let you know when fares drop to the price you're looking for.

FYI, I just bought tickets over Thanksgiving to HNL for $400 from LAX. So I think something in the $500-700 range from Chicago isn't so bad. good luck!

That's a good price, actually, especially this far out. Also check ATA.

Here's a link to another thread that has an alphabetical list of 78 air search (or related) sites:

http://tinyurl.com/qdzhc

Probably not much help, but move to LA. It'll be cheaper airfare. LOL.

I would stick to late May, early June for cheaper flights around your target dates. That's off peak season, so there should be deals to be had. I've never paid more than $500 total (includes tax, security fees, etc.) for any of my tickets flying direct (non-stop) out of O'Hare. The key is to not book so far in advance. I start looking 3 months out, and usually end up booking around 6-8 weeks before my travel dates. My first trip to Kauai I used Expedia ($420), my trips to Maui ($480) and Oahu ($440)I used AAA travel to find the cheapest rates, and then found the dates that fit my target.

I once found it was a better deal to book through a travel agent and do a package flight/hotel. We chose a really lousy hotel for 2 nights and never stayed there. The cost was less than booking a flight elsewhere without the room attached. Just a thought.

Visit kayak.com and set up a daily fare alert. They will email you each day with the lowest fares available for the month you specify.

Sounds like the average. We paid about $750 from Cleveland in July, back in 04. Haven't rates gone up since then?

If I saw one in the $500-$600 range I would think that was a steal.

Good luck.

Are your dates flexible at all as some of the airlines for travel to Hawaii flights on Tues,Wed,Thurs or Sat are less expensive and less travelled quite often. When doing your search have them also check the day before and after. Neither of your time frames are what is normally peak time for Hawaii such as Dec-Feb or July- Aug.

Check www.airtohawaii.com.

Thanks for all the help. Our oldest is in high school; we don't want to pull him out if we can avoid it. We are looking at airfare only because we can use our HGVC timeshare there. But perhaps a package would be cheaper even if we didn't use the hotel part of it. I'll check into that too.