I'm not sure how the inter-island flights work. We're flying into Honolulu, going directly to Maui for 6 days and then coming back to Oahu for 3 days. Our flight doesn't arrive in HNL until 6:00 PM and I'd like to get to Maui as early as possible since our first flight leaves the east coast at 6:00 that morning. Any suggestions for how much time I should allow between flights? Since the flight will be booked separately from our mainland flight, will they put us on a later flight if our flight to HNL is late and we miss the connection, or would we have to pay a penalty? Is it common for flights to be booked?

If you book the interisland flight on a sep. ticket [which is what you say you are doing] the interisland flight doesn't have to do anything to accomodate a late arrival from mainland.

You should try to get the flights all on one ticket, that will help you reschedule interisland with least amount of difficulty and cost.

On sep. tickets, neither airline will do much to help you with out cost.

Thanks DebitNM. The flight to HNL was a pair of RT tickets on United that my husband won in a raffle at work so it has to be separate.

I was just on checking the airline sites. Go had a restricted, non-refundable fare for $58-82 depending on the time or a non-restricted, refundable fare for $124. Hawaiian has a Coach Plus fare for $16 extra that gives "Free Same-Day Standby" and "no change fee" so it looks like that would be the safe thing to do for the flight to Maui.

Darn, they have a flight at 5:55 and 6:55. I wonder if we'd have any chance of making that 5:55 as standby if our flight was early? Hey, I can dream right?

Forget the 5:55; you'll be lucky to make the 6:55 and even luckier if you bags make the 6:55. Is that the last flight of the day? You would then have to factor in a possible overnight in HNL without your checked luggage [assuming you through check it to Maui [which you should, cause I can't begin to imagine trying to get your bags in HNL from the United Flight and then checked in to the next flight.

You have to take the Wikki Express to get to the interisland terminal. If all goes perfectly, an hour might work.

There are others on here that are way more knowledgable on getting from one terminal to the other. They will surely chime in today.

Good Luck!

I'd get the coach plus fare and play it safe. I think the change fee is $50.00 if you miss the scheduled flight, so for $16 extra is worth it in my opinion. United has the farthest gates from the inter-island terminal. If the flight gets in early you can walk (15 minutes) or take the wiki-wiki shuttle.
There is some good food in the inter-island terminal and a few shops to kill some time. Have a great trip.

Thanks for the info. It figures that United would be the farthest! We should be OK with the 6:55. We only do carryon so luggage isn't a problem. I think there are two (maybe 3) flights after that. In the worst case we have friends in HNL that we could call.

We're due for some good luck with flights. My husband, who seldom travels for work, had to go to San Francisco two weeks in a row and got stuck coming back both times. The first one was the snow storm here in Raleigh and then again two days ago with the storm in NYC. They rerouted him through Dallas yesterday. I laughed when I saw the morning weather calling for snow in Dallas! Luckily, they just had to sit on the tarmack for two hours waiting to get out.

If you do get in early (my west coast flights usually are early on United) take the shuttle and you might make the earlier 5:55 flight so the $16.00 would be worth the price.