SRQRobin

Help. I booked roundtrip InterIsland tickets for my husband and I from HNL to Hilo, returning from Kona to HNL thru Northwest Airlines using FF airmiles. Northwest told me that I could call Hawaiian 90 days before my flight and request seat assignments. Today I called (89 days out) and Hawaiian is telling me that Northwest "missinformed me" and we can only get seat assignments at the airport (or via their website 24 hours before the flight BUT in my case, since I ticketed thru Northwest Hawaiian's Virtually There website doesn't "recognize" my itinerary number so I won't be able to do that either). We booked our tickets months ago so we could avoid just this kind of "last minute chaos" but now I'm worried we won't even get seats together on the plane. Anybody with similar experiences?? Any suggestions??

pspercy

It's like Southwest, open seating but the flights are so short it doesn't matter.

hester

My son goes to college at University of Hawaii. We live in Washington state, so he flies back and forth a lot. This has happened to us many times. My advice is to just keep calling Hawaiian Air. It seems like each agent who answers the phone goes by different rules. Many times they tell me to wait until check in or 24 hours prior, I am like you I want all my ducks in a row. Hawaiian has also been known to overbook flights. I just keep on calling about every other day until I get an agent that will give my son a seat assignment. I just ask for the seat assignment and then tell his name after they say I can have the assignment. I think they can put notes in computer if they have your name and they know how many times you have called. I am always very polite. Killing them with kindness helps. Fortunately my son is now a gold FF and gets immediate seat assignments. Overall Hawaiian air has been very easy to deal with. Have a great trip!

dusty56438

Hawaiian Airlines used to have open seating on all their interisland flights. They changed this to reserved seating about 6 months or so ago. Perhaps there are still some bugs in the seating system because of this.

If you cannot get your seats together, perhaps you can exchange seats with someone once you get on the plane.

If not, it is only a one hour flight.

bluefan

Dusty is correct in that HA now allows advanced seating assignments on inter-island flights. I've got them after purchasing directly on their website as well as phoning a cust serv agent.

I would rec that you try again with another cust serv agent. HA is one of the nicest, most flexible and accomodating domestic airlines out there in my opinion. With their many inter-island flights, there should be plenty of open seats on any given flight to be able to sit together. So even if you can't get seat assignments through a phone agent, you're very likely to get adjacent seats if you check-in 24 hours before the flight, and possibly get upgrades or exit-row seats if you're one of the first ones to check-in online.

I doubt that HA overbooks inter-island flights, and if they did, I doubt there would be any dire consequences unless you're booked on the last flight of the day. When I was there at HNL this past month waiting for my HA interisland flight to Hilo, there were many of the following types of announcements: "If anyone traveling to XXX would like to depart at an earlier time, please go to Gate XX." So I wouldn't worry about being able to get adjacent seats.

suze

My experience with Hawaiian is from the mainland, not interisland, but i suggest as Hester says, simply keep calling Hawaiian. I happened upon two different friendly clerks, who gave me seat assignments over the phone, when in theory I was to have to wait to get to the airport (my worry was getting stuck in the middle seat on a 6+ hour flight!).

But as others have mentioned it's a fairly short flight, so I don't see a huge problem if you ended up sitting apart, is it?