Hello, from Waikiki Beach on Honolulu, Hawaii with a Fare War Story. Several months ago, our friends in the revenue management departments of United, Northwest and Delta Airlines gave frugal travelers a 5 day fare war that has sent me here for a couple days in the sun with friends. This one was one of the stranger fares wars I’ve seen as it involved three carriers, not the typical two, and had brief periods of TRUCE followed by raiding one another’s customers again and again and again.

As I recall it started with United Airlines offering fares from Detroit, Michigan (A Northwest hub) to Honolulu for $287 round trip. It quickly spread to include Minneapolis, another NW hub and eventually Memphis the third NW hub. Northwest of course retaliated by offering matching fares from Chicago and Washington Dulles, two United hubs. They quickly redrew the fare from Washington IIRC. And somehow shortly thereafter, Delta felt left out and they began offering this fantastic fare from the NW and United hubs too. United then absolutely had to offer the fare from Atlanta, a Delta hub. My chronology may be mixed up but these were the players and cities involved.
I got involved about the second day with four friends from Hilton Head Island as Atlanta is just a short drive away. Two of the group have never been to the islands which makes it all the more fun for me.
Getting a group together for a trip is tough as everybody has to check schedules, some have children and work, and some are just slow making up their minds. Time was of the essence, as these fare wars can end any second and the $200 fare becomes $700 again. My single travel buddy Bob, is usually a quick yes and he wanted Stuey along for a Hawaii first and his Bob’s girlfriend Susie had never been to Hawaii, but we needed to get Mimi to watch the kids for xx?? number of days. Richard decided to join at the last minute and was able to get in on the price, but only the second time it showed up. In other words he was too late at first. The price disappeared and miraculously reappeared. That never, well I guess it does, happen. Here is how it played out.

With Bob and his short term attention span, and Susie leaving the kids with Mimi, we decided on a real quickie trip and it will be action packed. Our airfare round trip was $217 each with United Airlines $100 off ecertificates.

We arrived yesterday afternoon, rented a car and are stayed at the Sheraton, a block from Waikiki. We took the short walk to the beach, to view Diamondhead, see the tourist sections of downtown Waikiki and we were off to bed. I was able to secure three rooms with 12 United Airlines more $100 ecerts and $135 in the cash and points SPG program. I got them all from a friend that eventually turned out to be fraudulent, and had to replace some of them with other items of value that I had laying around. The airfare worked as the ecerts were already used and honored. We also used ecert trades to upgrade ourselves to first class with more trades, some of which went smoothly and several I need to make replacement for certificates that did not get used. Our actual flight cost was $267 with what I had in the ecerts. I got upgraded on all 4 segments, as I have status, Bob get three segments and all of us had the first row in first class on the 777 from San Francisco to Hawaii yesterday afternoon.

Today is Pearl Harbor EARLY this morning as it does get crowded and we have a very full day. The rental car will wait in the Harbor parking lot with our carry on bags as nothing is allowed in the visitor center or at the memorial. Then we take the short hop to the airport and short Aloha flight to Lihue, Kauai. When we got the tickets I traded for three of them arranging for a first class upgrade for a friend on an American flight. My cost was 15K American miles and he gave me 3 x 5K (a nice redemption from United) for the Aloha tickets. Bob and Susie paid $99 round trip each.

This afternoon on Kauai will be spent laying around the pool at the Kauai Sands hotel, grabbing a bite to eat and a hike down the beach. The Kauai Sands was one of the last locally owned hotels on Kauai. Katy and I stayed there a couple years ago. It was a clean, well taken care of mom and pop hotel that has now been bought out by a chain and I’m anxious to see what has changed. The price was $108 per night, a real bargain, for Hawaii.

Tomorrow morning, Stuey, Bob and Susie are off for the 8AM fifty five minute helicopter tour of the island while I sleep in and Richard does his paperwork. The hotel is close to the airport, so they’ll get us when done and then off to Princeville, Hanalei and the NaPali coast of Kauai. The scenery will be magnificent; hopefully no rain and we’ll hike and snorkel where the movie Jurassic Park was filmed. It is a truly wilderness area and access is across the Seven Bridges if your heading that way.

The trip is winding down tomorrow night as we fly back to Honolulu and catch the redeye to Denver leaving Oahu at 11:15 PM and arriving in Denver the next morning to connect to our last flight back to Atlanta.

People say to me, why do you go to Hawaii for only three days? And my answer is, because that is all the time we had. The price was right, I road in First Class all the way, slept, wrote, read , ate and watched movies, and got to see two friends experience the islands for their very first time.

And to top it all off, I bought all 5 tickets using my CitiPremier Pass Elite card and I now have 50,000 Thank You Points in the bank for future use. (10K RT each ticket). And I am another 10K miles closer to my British Midland Airlines BMI Gold Status for 2009.

The experiences of life make it rich. This experience cost so little monetarily, and will return all of us memories for a lifetime.