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Hawaiian Airlines has announced that it will commence daily service between Honolulu and Tokyo Narita from 22 July 2016. This route will be in addition to the daily Honolulu – Haneda service that Hawaiian Airlines currently offers. Reservations for this new route are not yet open but are expected any day now.
The planned schedule is as follows:
HA821 HNL 15:30 – 19:00+1 day NRT
HA822 NRT 21:00 – 09:55 HNL
Hawaiian Airlines wil fly its Airbus A330-200 aircraft on the route and, while right now that’s not the most appealing of products (it lacks a lie-flat premium cabin seat), the improvements to the cabins that are expected to be rolled out in 2016 should make this a very good choice for premium cabin customers.
The current seat options/dimensions on Hawaiian Airlines’ A330-200 are as follows:
And, while that’s a reasonably good set of dimensions for an Economy Class product, the first class product is definitely lacking. From 2016, however, Hawaiian will be replacing its old First Class cabin with a completely new flat-bed product that will bring the airline in line with other trans-Pacific carriers.
Hawaiian Airlines New First Class A330-200 (Image courtesy of Hawaiian Airlines)
Hawaiian Airlines New First Class A330-200 (Image courtesy of Hawaiian Airlines)
Hawaiian Airlines New First Class A330-200 (Image courtesy of Hawaiian Airlines)
If Hawaiian can marry-up this new First Class cabin without losing any space from the economy class seats (and I don’t see why that won’t be possible) this could be a nice way to get to Tokyo.
Connections From The Lower 48
The schedule that Hawaiian Airlines have announced for the new Honolulu – Narita route appears to make connections to/from the continental US possible….even easy. On any given day Hawaiian, American Delta all have flights from Los Angeles that would be able to connect on to the new Narita Service:
And Virgin America, Hawaiian and United have 4 daily flights from San Francisco that would make the connection with ease too:
Lastly, Seattle rounds off the West Coast connections with 2 flights (Delta and Hawaiian) that would work well.
You could ask why would you connect in Honolulu rather than just take any of the non-stop flights to Tokyo from the various West Coast departure points? And the answer to that is price.
While non-stop flights are almost always preferable to a stop-over this route will give passengers to Tokyo another option when traveling to Narita and more options are always good.
Clearly Hawaiian has scheduled this route to capture more of the Japanese tourist trade (of which a lot already heads east to Hawaii) but it’s still good to know that it may serve a purpose for US tourists heading the other way.
Award Travel
Hawaiian Airlines awards can be booked using any of the following airline loyalty currencies:
- HawaiianMiles
- Korean Air SkyPass Miles
- Virgin America Elevate Points
- Virgin Atlantic FlyingClub Miles
The number of miles you’ll need will vary from airline to airline but, to give you an example, here’s how many HawaiianMiles you’ll need for a one-way trip to/from Japan:
Featured image courtesy of Eric Salard via Flickr
