Hawaiian Airlines Improves Their Co-Branded Credit Card

Hawaiian Airlines released updates to both their personal and business credit card this morning.  It seems to be a busy month for credit card re-launches.  Frontier Airlines also released a new card recently, then World of Hyatt did the same.  The Hawaiian Airlines MasterCard is a bit of a narrower use case than the previous two.  Unsurprisingly, it’s most rewarding for folks who fly to or from Hawaii.  Maybe a bit surprising to readers, I’ve never been to Hawaii.  It’s certainly on my bucket list.  But, the right opportunity has never presented itself.  That’s part of the reason I was curious about Hawaiian Airlines’ new credit cards.

Let’s take a look at both of the new credit cards:

Hawaiian Airlines World Mastercard

• $99 annual fee
• 3 miles per dollar on Hawaiian Airlines purchases
• 2 miles per dollar on gas, dining and grocery stores
• 1 mile per dollar on everything else
• 50,000 mile sign-up bonus after spending $3,000 in the first 90 days
• 50% off companion certificate (coach travel only)
• First checked bag free
• Discounted award flight inventory
• $100 discount on companion ticket at card anniversary
• Share miles between family members and friends
• No foreign transaction fees
• Free ShopRunner membership

Hawaiian Airlines Business Mastercard

• $99 annual fee
• 3 miles per dollar on Hawaiian Airlines purchases
• 2 miles per dollar on gas, dining and grocery stores
• 1 mile per dollar on everything else
• 50,000 mile sign-up bonus after making your first purchase
• 40,000 mile bonus if you spend $100,000 in a year
• 50% off companion certificate (coach travel only)
• Share miles between family members and friends
• No foreign transaction fees

How Far Do Those Miles Go?

I took a quick look at the Hawaiian Airlines award chart from North America.  You can find their full award chart on their website.  For now, I’m going to focus on just the awards from North America:

For perspective, a coach one-way ticket on United Airlines from North America to Hawaii is 22,500 miles one-way.  So, Hawaiian Airlines’ cheapest coach awards are a bit cheaper.  The first class awards are the same amount of miles as United if you’re traveling from the West Coast.  Where Hawaiian gets to be a better value is for flights from places like Chicago, Denver, Houston, New York and Washington-Dulles.  United charges a 10,000 mile premium on each one-way flight to/from each of those destinations.

Hawaiian also offers upgrade awards for 25,000 miles one-way.  They don’t seem to charge a co-pay, which strikes me as a reasonable redemption.

Hawaiian Airlines has a great new first class product.  I haven’t had a chance to fly it, but there are some reviews out there from sites I trust.  Here’s one that shows a bit of the coach cabin as well as first class.  And, my friend Tiffany also has a detailed review.

The Final Two Pennies

Is the Hawaiian Airlines credit card right for me?  As I mentioned, I’ve never been to Hawaii.  It’s a long flight from my home airport of Washington-Dulles.  There’s exactly one non-stop flight option that takes about 10 hours to fly.  For quite some time, those flights were on older planes.  And, plenty of the other options to Hawaii haven’t been on lie-flat first class seats.

Maybe I’ll sound spoiled, but we’re lucky enough to be able to snag lie-flat business class seats on our flights to Europe.  Those flights are generally shorter than flights to Hawaii.  So, flying coach to Hawaii hasn’t been high on my list (though I guess I might be crazy enough to try an inaugural Southwest flight).

The sign-up bonus for the Hawaiian Airlines Mastercard is interesting.  If you’re interested in flying coach to Hawaii, the 50% discount for a companion ticket plus the 50,000 mile sign-up bonus would get a family of 4 well on their way to a pretty cheap Hawaii trip.  Flights to Hawaii have been much cheaper than normal lately.  However, it’s pretty normal to see $750-$1,000 tickets round-trip in coach.  Redeeming 40,000 miles for that seems like a pretty good deal to me.

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