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Hawaiian Airlines customer review : 13 July 2011 by Jon Veel (Singapore)
Trip Rating : 4/10
Cabin Flown:First

Manila-Seattle via Honolulu and return with an additional stopover in Maui. Flights were labelled as Business Class (MNL-HNL) and First Class (HNL-SEA) though in fact, there is no difference in cabin or service. All flights were on Hawaiian's elderly 767's. Do not be fooled by the winglets (which HA added to save fuel), these are old planes with interiors to match.

Also, do not for a moment think you will be getting anything like a Business or First Class product on a first tier airline, this would be a mediocre Premium Economy product at best. The seat I would guesstimate the pitch to be around 38-40" with limited recline and in a 2-2-2 layout with only 3 rows. I am 6ft 5" and sat in 1B for all sectors, this bulkhead seat has the advantage that you don't have someone reclining their head into your lap, but the leg space is woefully inadequate. I had to sit at an angle with my feet into the forward galley to get at all comfortable. The AV comprised personal players that were handed out with a limited range of films and TV shows pre-loaded. Unfortunately this was the same content for all 4 long haul flights and by the end of the first flight I had already watched all that interested me. It was also awkward to use these during the meal service as there was basically nowhere to put them.

Food was adequate although dry and uninspiring. The "champagne" served on take off was in fact a fairly unpleasant Prosecco and the single white wine choice with the meal was probably a hazard to the aircraft paintwork if you spilled any. As with all airplane travel, the quality of the experience is relative to the price you have paid. Clearly Hawaiian are used to people upgrading into this cabin either as a frequent flyer freebie or as a $1-200 add on to the regular ticket price in which case, possibly its worth it, but probably not.

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Hawaiian Airlines customer review : 20 May 2011 by Peter Pomeranze (USA)
Trip Rating : 6/10
Cabin Flown:First

Honolulu-Manila Business Class. Very disappointed to note that Hawaiian Airlines new, upgraded inflight service is a real downgrade. They've ditched the tapas style menu for a slow food service. In addition they are no longer catered by Chef Gannon and for the first time in years I was served bad food on Hawaiian Airlines. The flight attendants were wonderful but clearly embarrassed by the downgrade. In addition the new printed menus are tacky. Also time to retire the 767. Just not up to standard for a 10 hour plus flight!

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Hawaiian Airlines customer review : 19 May 2010 : by A Santos (Philippines)
Trip Rating : 0/10
Cabin Flown:Economy

MNL-SEA and LAS-MNL. Overall, a disappointing experience and we won't make the mistake of booking it again. It was really like taking a domestic US flight across the Pacific when there are so many options on international airlines. The service, amenities, and aircraft are not comparable. Manila check-in was ok but they had problems with non-working printers and were unable to print all of our boarding passes (they told us to just pick up the last one in HNL because they couldn't figure it out).

We boarded the 20+ year-old 767 with overhead bins sized from the 80's, no IFE, and ageing cabin. The flight attendants all appeared to be senior and had a lot of attitude. We overheard one flight attendant insult an elderly passenger behind her back because the passenger requested to change her new blanket which had hairs on it. The mocking and poor attitude of flight attendants which other reviewers below referred to was true on our flight.

To watch movies, they rented personal DVD players for $15 per segment. With a change of plane in HNL that meant 4 segments round-trip or $60 per person to watch movies. When we inquired if there was a seafood option (the only choices were chicken and pork), the flight attendant replied they used to have special meals but no longer offer them.

On the return flight from LAS we stopped over in HNL for a night but were charged baggage fees for that segment because it was technically a domestic flight - $25 per bag. Finally we took off from HNL-MNL and weren't in the air for 30 minutes when the captain announced a faulty generator requiring us to return to HNL (again a 20+ year-old 767).

However, we had to burn fuel first so we flew in circles at 7,000 ft for 4 hours with the landing gear and flaps fully extended - an uncomfortable ride. The flight attendants were plain combative with understandably worried and upset passengers. Six hours later we landed in HNL again. They arranged another plane with a new crew and we arrived in MNL 8 hours late.

To make matters worse, they left behind baggage of at least 50 passengers in HNL so there was an ugly queue of irate passengers at 2:30 am after an 8 hour delay. We received our luggage two days later. We wrote a letter to Hawaiian but they did not respond. All in all, if we had flown on CX or KE or OZ via HKG or SEL to the mainland, we could've avoided a tremendous amount of hassle (eg. having to collect your bags and check-in again in HNL), being nickel and dimed (eg. luggage fees and DVD rental fees), poor service (being insulted by flight attendant), and delays from old, faulty aircraft.

I should also mention I felt bad for the business class passengers who paid $2,000+ for their seats. The seats in business class are domestic US first class seats - very little recline and leg room. You have many choices and until Hawaiian actually starts caring about their transpacific passengers, we are not flying them again.

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Originally posted by KathyH
How was Cebu, John? The pics of the ocean/beaches look gorgeous. I have one of those island of the world calendars and just finished a month that featured the Philippines -- and I thought, WOW, I never knew it was so beautiful. It's a long flight though, no? Flying along the equatorial route means a lot of hours.

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