Hawaiian Airlines has released a substantial number of Business Class reward seats on its flights from Sydney and Auckland to Honolulu, for travel over the coming months. You could redeem Virgin Australia Velocity points or American Airlines AAdvantage miles to book a seat!

Over the past year or so, Hawaiian Airlines has released very little Business Class award availability on its flights to Australia and New Zealand. This was largely due to Hawaiian selling so many of these seats to fare-paying passengers. And on rare occasions where Hawaiian Airlines has made award seats available, it has generally just been on a small number of random flights up to a few months prior to departure.

Qantas Business Class award availability between Sydney and Honolulu is also exceptionally rare.

Hawaiian Airlines still isn’t releasing reward seats on its flights to and from Australia or New Zealand more than a few months in advance. But the airline did just release a whole lot of Business Class award availability for those looking to jet off to Hawaii in March, April, May or June of this year!

Hawaiian Airlines award availability over the coming months

Sydney is the only Australian destination served by Hawaiian Airlines, while Auckland is the airline’s only destination in New Zealand. Both the Sydney-Honolulu and Auckland-Honolulu routes are served by Airbus A330s.

Sydney-Honolulu flights

If you live in Sydney and you’re up for a last-minute holiday to Hawaii, there are currently 13 flights (at the time of writing) with Hawaiian Airlines Business Class reward seats available from Sydney to Honolulu between 19 March and 28 April 2023.

In the other direction, there are now 16 Honolulu-Sydney flights with Business availability, for departure dates between 18 March and 16 April 2023.

Most of the flights with Business reward seats have 1-2 seats available. But we have seen flights with more seats, including a Honolulu-Sydney service in April with up to 7 Business reward seats available on the same plane.

Hawaiian Airlines flies five times per week from Sydney to Honolulu.

Auckland-Honolulu flights

If you live in New Zealand, or you’re able to position across the ditch, there are currently 11 dates between 2 May and 6 June 2023 with Hawaiian Airlines Business availability from Auckland to Honolulu.

In the other direction, there are currently 34 dates between 22 March and 28 June 2023 with Business availability from Honolulu to Auckland. This includes most flights during May.

The Auckland-Honolulu route runs 3x weekly.

How to book Hawaiian Airlines Business Class using points

Hawaiian Airlines is not part of an alliance. But you can redeem HawaiianMiles or points with many of Hawaiian’s partner airlines to book a frequent flyer redemption seat. This includes Virgin Australia Velocity points and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points.

You can also use American Airlines AAdvantage miles to book Hawaiian Airlines flights between Australia or New Zealand and Hawaii. However, you can’t use AAdvantage miles to fly with Hawaiian between Hawaii and mainland USA.

Redeeming Velocity points for Hawaiian Airlines flights

Of these options, Velocity points are the most easily accessible to Australian frequent flyers. It would cost 78,000 Velocity points + taxes to book a one-way Business Reward Seat on Hawaiian Airlines from Sydney to Honolulu. From Auckland to Honolulu, it’s 71,000 Velocity points + taxes.

When redeeming Velocity points on Hawaiian Airlines, there are no carrier charges payable. You’ll just pay the third-party taxes.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to book Hawaiian Airlines reward seats on the Virgin Australia website. Instead, you’ll have to call the Velocity Membership Contact Centre on 13 18 75 during opening hours.

How to find Hawaiian Airlines award availability

While you can’t use the Virgin Australia website to search for Hawaiian Airlines award availability, there are a couple of things you can do to get an indication of what seats may be available.

Use the American Airlines website

For Sydney-Honolulu and Auckland-Honolulu flights, one option is to search on the American Airlines website. You don’t need to have an American Airlines AAdvantage account; just tick the “redeem miles” box to search for award seats.

The American Airlines website is a great tool because it shows Hawaiian Airlines award availability to/from Australia and New Zealand. There is also a “calendar” option that allows you to see an overview of award availability across an entire month. You can even filter the results to only show non-stop flights in Business/First Class, which filters out most other flights from the results.

For example, the American Airlines availability calendar shows multiple dates next month with Business Class availability from Honolulu to Sydney. As Qantas rarely releases Business Class availability on its Honolulu-Sydney flight, most of these dates represent Hawaiian Airlines availability:

You can click on any date to see exactly which flight has an award seat available. If a Hawaiian Airlines seat is showing as available on the American Airlines website, there’s a good chance you’ll also be able to book the same seat using Velocity points by calling Velocity Frequent Flyer – although this is not 100% guaranteed.

Use Expert Flyer

If you have an Expert Flyer subscription, you can also use this to search for Hawaiian Airlines award availability. (If you’re searching for flights between Hawaii and the US mainland, you may need to use this method as the American Airlines website won’t show any seats.)

If you’re looking for Business/First Class award seats on Hawaiian Airlines, you could use Expert Flyer to conduct an “Award & Upgrade Availability Search”. Select the “First – Saver & Partner Awards (D)” option to show seats that are available to book using Velocity points.

Expert Flyer’s Award & Upgrade search tool doesn’t provide an option to search for Hawaiian Airlines Economy Class award availability. For this reason, I normally use Expert Flyer’s “Flight Availability Search” tool to search manually for award availability on this particular airline.

Hawaiian Airlines makes “T” class seats available to partner airlines as Economy Class awards, and “D” class available as Business/First Class awards. So, using Expert Flyer, you can search for Hawaiian Airlines flight availability and only show these two fare classes in the results. This gives you an indication of the award availability seen by partner airlines in both Economy and Business Class.

On the results page, the number of “D” seats available represents the number of Business Class reward seats that you could theoretically book using Velocity points. The number of “T” class seats shows the number of Economy reward seats available.

For example, the flight shown in the screenshot below appears to have 6 Business reward seats available and at least 7 Economy seats.

It is possible that the availability shown by Expert Flyer might not exactly match what the Velocity Frequent Flyer call centre can see. So, while this is a good guide, you still need to call Velocity to confirm the availability (and to make a booking).

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 economics, aviation & 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.