Jumpseating to Hawaii

[Monty Burns 1]

Anyone have any tips on jumpseating to Hawaii out of LA? For instance, what is Hawaiian Airlines' jumpseating policy or any other carrier's policy for that matter for flights over there? Thanks!

 

[Green Banana]

Hawaiian will take unlimited jumpseats in the back. This is really a great deal. You may also want to look at going from some of the other surounding airports that HAL and Aloha go from. The loads tend to be lighter. As for UAL. It is verry hard. If you want to go to Oahu, you may be better going to Maui then over interisland. That is what I end up doing.

 

[justApilot]

The loads out of ONT are usually much lighter on HAL.

 

[Freight Dog]

I used to commute from SoCal to here before 9/11, and I can tell you that UAL has the most flights between LAX and Hawaii (HNL, OGG, KOA, LIH). They were a pretty reliable ride simply because they have that many flights. You're bound to get on one of them.

While Hawaiian has a great jumpseat policy, their flights are almost always packed especially LAX-HNL because both are their pilot and F/A bases, so there are quite a few commuters on those. I'd check their flights out of ONT and out of SAN. They fly to HNL and OGG from SAN.

Delta also has quite a few flights, and they have late Hawaii-bound departures out of LAX in case you get stuck.

ATA has an unlimited jumpseat policy, and they may not be a bad deal. I rode them a few times between HNL-LAX.

Your best bet is to call and check on the loads the day before, and ask the reservations agent how many nonrevs are listed. They may say.. oh yeah, the flight looks good.. 20 open seats in coach and 4 in first.. but they'll have 60 nonrevs trying to get on, and as a jumpseater you get the last priority.

As for Aloha, we fly out of SNA and BUR in SoCal. In the winter months, we can be weight restricted out of SNA if there are strong headwinds. But that problem should be solved with winglets. BUR depends on which runway they're using... take off on RWY 15, no sweat... We also have 4 departures out of OAK, and we're never weight-restricted out of there. Something to keep in mind.

Hope this helps!