Flights to Hawaii (and the USA, generally) are expensive right now. Economy fares on Qantas, Hawaiian Airlines or even Jetstar are selling for well over $1,000 return, and Business Class fares start from around $3,000 return on Jetstar, whose “Business Class” is more like Premium Economy. A Business Class ticket to Honolulu on Qantas or Hawaiian would cost well over $6,000 round-trip.

But if you live in Sydney or Melbourne, and you don’t mind flying to Hawaii the long way, American Airlines currently has some cracking Premium Economy airfares to Honolulu for under $2,000 round-trip. You can even fly on Qantas aircraft for most of the trip and earn a large chunk of Qantas points and status credits.

There’s just one main catch – you’d have to fly via Los Angeles in both directions, and you can’t stop over in LA for more than 24 hours. This does add significantly to the overall flight time… but it also means Qantas Frequent Flyer members can pick up a lot more status credits!

With this deal, you could fly from either Sydney or Melbourne to Los Angeles in Premium Economy, flying either Qantas or American Airlines on the long trans-Pacific sector. You’d then need to connect onwards in American Airlines Economy Class (yes, we know 😕) from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

If starting your trip in Melbourne, you could also add a connecting Qantas flight in Business Class from Melbourne to Sydney, before connecting onwards in American Airlines Premium Economy from Sydney to LA, for around an extra $50 compared to flying Melbourne-Los Angeles directly on Qantas. Plus, you’d earn an additional 40 status credits for each Melbourne-Sydney flight in Business.

The flights are marketed by American Airlines, so you’ll be travelling on “AA” flight numbers even on any legs operated by Qantas.

This fare isn’t available for all travel dates, and it won’t be for everyone. But here’s one example of an itinerary that we found using Google Flights:

With this itinerary, if crediting the flights to Qantas Frequent Flyer, you could earn a total of 360 status credits and at least 25,400 Qantas points (or more points if you have status with Qantas). That’s more than enough status credits to reach Qantas Silver status.

Alternatively, if crediting to British Airways Executive Club, you could earn 420 tier points and at least 21,586 Avios.

How to book

It would probably not be easy to build an itinerary like this yourself on the American Airlines website. Instead, you could search on Google Flights for Premium Economy fares from Melbourne or Sydney to Honolulu and look for dates where round-trip flights are available for under $2,000. For example, here’s another itinerary we found through Google Flights:

Once you’ve found an itinerary through Google Flights, you can click directly through to the American Airlines where the itinerary will be ready for you to book.

Here’s another example of an itinerary that starts and ends in Sydney (but only earns 280 status credits as there are fewer flights):

We’ll be the first to admit that this is a long way to get to Hawaii, and the Los Angeles-Honolulu flight in Economy isn’t ideal. But this fare is less than half the current price of a Premium Economy ticket on Qantas or American Airlines from Sydney to Los Angeles without the add-on to Hawaii, which would start from around $4,750 return!

If you choose to fly on an American Airlines aircraft between Sydney and Los Angeles (AA72/73), you’ll be on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner with these seats:

If you use Qantas for the long trans-Pacific flight, you could be on either a Boeing 787 or an Airbus A380 with Qantas’ newer-style Premium Economy seats:

You could also book this deal through a good travel agent. If booking with a travel agent, you may even be able to book a similar fare departing from other Australian cities including Perth. Remember that any Qantas domestic connections with this fare book into Business Class, so starting in Perth could be very lucrative indeed! (For the benefit of any travel agents trying to construct this fare, the fare basis is PLE0ARN3.)

You can see a few examples of the kinds of things that are possible with this fare in our article from last year, where we used this airfare to highlight how crazy some of Qantas’ domestic Business Class pricing can be.

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.