Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles Program Guide: Everything You Need to Know

Note: All information about the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Credit Card has been collected independently by 10xTravel.

For many U.S. residents, Hawaii is the ultimate vacation destination. And if you’re planning on flying from the mainland U.S. to the Aloha State, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll be flying on Hawaiian Airlines. This airline, which dates back to 1929, operates more flights between Hawaii and the contiguous 48 states than any other airline. And, if you’re trying to get between the Hawaiian islands, Hawaiian Airlines is one of two airlines that operates inter-island flights. So, if you live in the U.S. and you’re interested in taking a trip to Hawaii, then you might want to consider getting there with the HawaiianMiles frequent flyer program.

HawaiianMiles, the frequent flyer program of Hawaiian Airlines, allows members to earn miles for flying on Hawaiian Airlines as well as with several airline partners. However, Hawaiian Airlines has significantly fewer partners than some major airlines as it’s not part of any airline alliance.

For many readers, the best way to rack up a balance of HawaiianMiles is to transfer American Express Membership Rewards points, which transfer at a 1:1 ratio. Or, if you fly with Hawaiian Airlines often, you might even want to consider signing up for the Hawaiian Airlines® World Elite Mastercard® or the Hawaiian Airlines® World Elite Business Mastercard®. Both of these cards have an annual fee of $99 and offer the opportunity to earn HawaiianMiles on every purchase, every day.

The best way to maximize the value of your HawaiianMiles is to redeem them for flights on Hawaiian Airlines or one of its partners. However, you can also redeem your miles for hotel stays and gift cards.

In this article, we’re going to cover the Hawaiian Airlines Elite status program, how to earn HawaiianMiles, how to redeem HawaiianMiles, and which of those redemption methods offers the best value per mile.

Disclaimer About Potential Alaska-Hawaiian Merger

As a disclaimer, Alaska Airlines has announced plans to acquire Hawaiian Airlines. While both airlines have already agreed to the deal, there’s still a chance that the acquisition could be blocked by the Department of Justice, which has blocked several similar deals in the past few years.

Should the merger make it through the DOJ, it will probably become effective around late 2024 to mid-2025. And, in all likelihood, the frequent flyer programs of both of these airlines would be combined and even share a co-branded credit card. In this case, this guide would no longer be relevant.

Stay tuned as we continue to update you on the progress of the potential Alaska-Hawaiian merger.

Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles Program Overview

Hawaiian Airlines was formed in 1929 under the name Inter-Island Airways as an operator of short sightseeing flights over Oahu. In 1941, the name was changed to Hawaiian Airlines when the company phased out several of its old flying boats and replaced them with new Douglas DC-3s. Over time, Hawaiian Airlines built up its route network to the U.S. West Coast and eventually to the entire country. They even added international routes to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, American Samoa and Tahiti.

Today, Hawaiian Airlines operates flights between the Hawaiian islands and destinations throughout North America, Asia and the South Pacific. They also market flights to many other destinations around the globe through their codeshare partners.

And, if Hawaiian Airlines is your frequent flyer program of choice, then you’ll be pleased to learn that you can earn HawaiianMiles by flying with several of Hawaiian Airlines’s partner airlines. These partners include:

• All Nippon Airways (ANA)
• China Airlines
• JetBlue
• Korean Air
• Virgin Atlantic
• Virgin Australia

And, while you can earn HawaiianMiles with all of these partner airlines, you can only redeem HawaiianMiles for flights with ANA, JetBlue, Korean Air, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.

You can only redeem HawaiianMiles for round-trip flights on partner airlines (not one-way, multi-city or stopover flights) and partner awards can only be booked over the phone (and not online). To book a partner award, you’ll need to call the Hawaiian Airlines reservation line and have your membership number ready.

Do HawaiianMiles Expire?

As of April 21, 2021, HawaiianMiles do not expire. This means that you don’t have to worry about keeping your account active to prevent your miles from expiring.

Hawaiian Airlines Pualani Elite Status Program

By frequently flying with Hawaiian Airlines, you can earn enough miles to qualify for Pualani Elite status. This Elite status program has two tiers:

• Pualani Gold
• Pualani Platinum

To earn Elite status, you either have to fly a certain number of segments or a certain number of miles per calendar year with Hawaiian Airlines. Your Elite status will be updated once the required number of segments or miles is posted to your HawaiianMiles account, which typically occurs about 48 hours after your flight.

The following chart includes the number of segments or miles required to earn each Elite status and the benefits included with each status:

As previously mentioned, when you achieve Pualani Platinum Elite status, you’ll automatically receive two certificates that are good for First Class upgrades on North America flights or Business Class upgrades on International flights. It’s worth noting that one of these certificates will get you an upgrade on a flight of 3,500 miles or less in distance. If you want to use these certificates to get an upgrade on a flight of more than 3,500 miles in distance, you’ll need to use two certificates.

You can also continue to earn even more upgrade certificates after you’ve achieved Pualani Platinum Elite status. You’ll earn six more upgrade certificates once you accumulate 75,000 qualifying miles in a calendar year. You also earn one additional certificate for every 10,000 qualifying miles you accumulate after 75,000. So, you’d earn an additional certificate when you rack up 85,000 qualifying miles, another certificate when you reach 95,000 qualifying miles and so on.

As you can see, earning Pualani Gold or Platinum Elite status comes with some pretty great perks, including complimentary upgrades, airport lounge access, bonus miles earnings and more. However, the only way to achieve these statuses is by taking flights on Hawaiian Airlines. So, if you don’t live in Hawaii or travel there frequently, you probably won’t be able to earn Pualani Elite status.

Hawaiian Airlines does have its own co-branded credit card called the Hawaiian Airlines® World Elite Mastercard®. However, miles earned through spending on this card won’t help you earn Elite status. Any miles earned by flying with partner airlines also don’t count toward Elite status.

And, in case you were wondering, Pualani is the name of the Hawaiian Airlines mascot, the woman whose face appears on the tails of Hawaiian Airlines airplanes. Her name translates to “heavenly flower” in the native language.

How to Earn Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles

There are plenty of ways to earn Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles, the most straightforward of which is to fly with Hawaiian Airlines. But, apart from that, you can also boost your HawaiianMiles balance by flying with partner airlines, spending on the Hawaiian Airlines co-branded credit card, transferring points from American Express Membership Rewards, booking hotel stays and more.

In the following sections, we’ll discuss all of the different ways to earn HawaiianMiles to help you save up for that next redemption.

Flying with Hawaiian Airlines

Of course, the most obvious way to earn HawaiianMiles is to take flights operated by Hawaiian Airlines. You’ll earn HawaiianMiles every time you fly on Hawaiian Airlines, regardless of which cabin class you’re in. The exact number of HawaiianMiles you’ll earn, though, is based on the actual distance of your flight in miles and the cabin class in which you’re flying.

The following table explains how many miles you’ll earn in each cabin class for Neighbor Island flights and North America flights:

For instance, the actual distance between Honolulu and Boston is 5,095 miles. So, if you were to fly this route on Hawaiian Airlines in Coach class, you’d earn 5,095 HawaiianMiles. If you were to fly the same route in First Class, you’d earn 7,643 HawaiianMiles.

The above table doesn’t apply to International flights as Hawaiian Airlines doesn’t offer First Class on International flights, only Coach and Business Class. The following table explains how many miles you’ll earn in each cabin class for International flights:

For example, the actual distance between Honolulu and Auckland is 4,383 miles. So, if you were to fly this route on Hawaiian Airlines in Coach class, you’d earn 4,383 HawaiianMiles. If you were to fly the same route in First Class, you’d earn 6,575 HawaiianMiles.

Connecting flights for travel across the Pacific Ocean would be counted as per segment. For instance, if you were flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo with a layover in Honolulu, you would earn miles for the segment from Los Angeles to Honolulu and earn miles for the segment from Honolulu to Tokyo as if they were separate flights.

Pualani Gold members earn 50% bonus miles and Pualani Platinum members earn 100% bonus miles for all paid flights on Hawaiian Airlines. For example, for a flight from Honolulu to Sydney (with a distance of 5,060 miles) in Coach class, you would earn 10,120 HawaiianMiles if you had Pualani Platinum status (which receives 100% bonus miles).

To make matters easier, you can find the route distance as well as how many HawaiianMiles you’ll earn in each cabin class on the mileage chart page on the Hawaiian Airlines website.

Flying with Partners

On top of earning HawaiianMiles for flights with Hawaiian Airlines, you can also earn HawaiianMiles for flying with partner airlines. Every partner has its own earnings chart, which you can view on the Hawaiian Airlines website here.

Calculating HawaiianMiles earnings on partner flights works pretty much the same way as with Hawaiian Airlines-operated flights. You simply need to multiply the actual distance of your flight by the percentage that corresponds with your fare class.

For example, here’s the earnings chart for China Airlines:

So, as you can see from the chart above, if you were to take a 2,000-mile flight in Business Class (fare code C) on China Airlines, you would earn 2,500 HawaiianMiles.

It’s worth noting that miles earned on partner flights do not count towards Elite status qualification. However, if you already have Pualani Elite status, you’ll earn your mileage bonus on partner flights.

To earn HawaiianMiles on partner flights, you’ll need to select Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles as your frequent flyer program of choice at the time of booking and enter your membership number. Then, any miles that you earn should be automatically credited to your account.

Spending on a Hawaiian Airlines Co-Branded Credit Card

Hawaiian Airlines currently offers two co-branded credit cards that allow you to earn HawaiianMiles for everyday purchases: the Hawaiian Airlines® World Elite Mastercard® and the Hawaiian Airlines® World Elite Business Mastercard®. Both cards have an annual fee of $99 and offer valuable welcome bonuses for new cardholders who spend a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time after account opening. On top of that, these two cards are very similar in terms of spending bonuses and features, with the main difference being that the Business Mastercard is geared toward small business owners.

Here is a breakdown of these two cards and their respective features:

If you consistently fly with Hawaiian Airlines, then signing up for one of these two cards might be a good idea. When it comes to the Hawaiian Airlines World Elite Mastercard, you can instantly offset the annual fee as soon as you use the $100 annual companion discount. Plus, this card will help you boost your HawaiianMiles balance every time you make a purchase.

On the other hand, since Hawaiian Airlines is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, you might be better off getting an American Express credit card and then transferring those points to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles.

For instance, if you’re looking for a card with a similar annual fee, then you may want to consider the Amex EveryDay® Preferred Credit Card, which has an annual fee of $95.

Bankoh Hawaiian Airlines® Visa® Debit Card

Hawaiian Airlines, unlike most other airlines, also has its own co-branded debit card (issued by Bank of Hawaii) called the Bankoh Hawaiian Airlines® Visa® Debit Card. With this card, you’ll earn 1X mile per $2 spent on qualifying purchases (up to 1,000 miles per month). Plus, you can earn bonus HawaiianMiles not subject to mileage caps when you use your card at HawaiianMiles Merchant partners.

This card also allows you to share HawaiianMiles with friends and family without incurring transfer fees.

If you live in Hawaii, then you may want to consider getting a Bankoh Hawaiian Airlines Visa Debit Card as it can help you rack up some extra HawaiianMiles. However, it’s worth noting that this card charges a monthly fee of $3, which comes out to $36 per year. So, if you aren’t going to be spending much money on your debit card (and, thus, not earning many HawaiianMiles), then you’re probably better off going with a checking account that doesn’t charge a monthly fee.

Transfer Partners

For many readers, the best way to boost your balance of HawaiianMiles is to make a transfer from American Express Membership Rewards. Amex points transfer to HawaiianMiles at a 1:1 ratio and transfers must be made in increments of 1,000.

To do so, you need to log in to your Amex account and go to the “Rewards” section. Then, you can click the “Transfer Partners” option and then choose Hawaiian Airlines. If you’ve never made a transfer from Amex Membership Rewards to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles before, you’ll have to link your accounts. Then, you can simply enter the number of points that you want to transfer and complete the transfer.

However, since Amex points are more flexible than HawaiianMiles, you should only transfer your Amex points to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles if you have a specific redemption in mind.

You should be aware that American Express charges an “excise tax offset fee” of $0.0006 per point transferred with a maximum fee of $99. And that fee isn’t insignificant. If you were to transfer 100,000 Amex points to HawaiianMiles, you’d have to pay a fee of $60. These fees are only imposed on transfers to Delta SkyMiles, Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles and JetBlue.

You can also transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles at a 3:1 ratio. Plus, every time you transfer 60,000 Bonvoy points at once, you’ll earn 5,000 bonus HawaiianMiles. So, if you were to transfer 30,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, you’d earn 10,000 HawaiianMiles. However, if you were to transfer 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, you’d earn 25,000 HawaiianMiles (because of the bonus).

Unfortunately, even if you earn the 5,000-mile bonus, this still isn’t a good way to use your Marriott Bonvoy points. You’re much better off redeeming your Bonvoy points through their native program.

Hotel Stays

You can also earn HawaiianMiles directly by booking stays with certain hotel partners and providing them with your HawaiianMiles membership number. However, by electing HawaiianMiles for your stay, you’ll usually be sacrificing the opportunity to earn that hotel’s native rewards currency. For instance, you can’t earn both HawaiianMiles and Marriott Bonvoy points for the same stay. You can only earn one or the other.

In most cases, you’re better off earning hotel points than HawaiianMiles for your stay. However, if you have no use for hotel points, then you may as well earn HawaiianMiles. The following table includes some of the hotel partners that allow you to earn HawaiianMiles for stays as well as their respective earnings rates:

Hawaiian Airlines also has its own hotel booking portal known as Hotel Rewards that allows you to earn HawaiianMiles at over 300,000 hotels worldwide. To do so, you can visit hotelawards.hawaiianairlines.com and select the “Earn Miles” option.

Then, enter your destination, travel dates and number of rooms and press the “Search” button. You’ll then see a list of results that match your search query.

The amount of miles you’ll earn for a specific stay depends on which hotel you book. However, in general, booking stays through Hotel Rewards is a good way to rack up extra HawaiianMiles and is generally much more rewarding than adding your HawaiianMiles number to reservations made directly through hotels.

Car Rentals

Hawaiian Airlines has partnerships with Avis, Budget and Payless that allow you to earn HawaiianMiles for booking eligible car rentals. For all three of these partners, HawaiianMiles basic members will earn 250 miles per rental, Pualani Gold members will earn 500 miles per rental and Pualani Platinum members will earn 750 miles per rental.

Hawaiian Airlines also has its own car rental booking portal that allows you to earn HawaiianMiles. To do so, visit the Hawaiian Airlines Car Rental Portal and select the “Earn Miles” option.

Then, you can enter your pick-up location, pick-up date, return date and driver age and press the search button. You’ll then be presented with a list of rental car options that match your search query.

This portal only displays results from Avis, Budget and Payless and you’ll earn the same number of miles per rental as if you rented directly from that rental car company. So, HawaiianMiles basic members earn 250 miles per rental, Pualani Gold members earn 500 miles per rental and Pualani Platinum members earn 750 miles per rental.

While you won’t earn any more miles by renting through Hawaiian Airlines, this portal is a good way to see all available HawaiianMiles-earning rentals in one place.

Shopping with Partners

You can earn additional miles by shopping at HawaiianMiles Marketplace partners. However, unlike most frequent flyer programs, Hawaiian Airlines only allows you to earn miles for shopping with partners if you have one of their co-branded credit or debit cards.

If you do have one of these cards, you can earn miles by shopping with a variety of merchants in-store and online. But it’s worth noting that nearly all of the in-store offers are located in Honolulu. So, if you live far from Honolulu, then this feature may not do you much good.

The specific number of miles that you’ll earn depends on which partner you’re shopping with. However, you can earn up to 10X miles per $1 spent with certain merchants. You can see the full list of eligible merchants on the Hawaiian Airlines marketplace website.

Grocery Shopping at Foodland

You don’t have to have a Hawaiian Airlines co-branded credit card or debit card to earn miles for grocery shopping at Foodland and Sack ‘N Save stores. You simply need to enroll in Foodland’s Maikai rewards program and then link your HawaiianMiles account.

You’ll receive 1X Maikai points per $1 spent at Foodland and Sack ‘N Save stores. Then, you’ll need to elect to redeem Maikai points for HawaiianMiles at checkout. You can redeem 250 Maikai points for 200 HawaiianMiles or redeem 1,000 Maikai points for 1,000 HawaiianMiles. Obviously, the latter is the better option. You’ll also earn 300 bonus miles when you spend $100 or more in groceries at the time of redemption.

Unfortunately, for those of you who live on the mainland, Foodland and Sack ‘N Save stores\ can only be found in the Hawaiian islands.

How to Redeem Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles

Now that you’re an expert on how to earn Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles, let’s talk about why you might want to do that in the first place. There are plenty of different ways to redeem HawaiianMiles. However, not all redemption methods offer the same amount of value per mile. So, you want to be discerning when deciding where to redeem your miles and calculate the value per mile that each redemption offers.

In general, the best way to maximize the value of your HawaiianMiles is to redeem them for reward flights with Hawaiian Airlines or one of its partner airlines. Unfortunately, while you can find high-value partner award flights, you can’t book partner awards online. Instead, you’ll have to call the Hawaiian Airlines service center to book partner awards, which can be a bit difficult.

HawaiianMiles can also be redeemed for hotel stays, car rentals, gift cards and more. However, these redemption options tend to offer far less value per mile. Nevertheless, in the following sections, we’re going to run through all of the different ways to redeem Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles and how much value each of these redemption methods provides.

Flying with Hawaiian Airlines

All in all, the best way to redeem HawaiianMiles is to book Hawaiian Airlines award flights. These redemptions tend to provide solid value and it’s easy to book Hawaiian Airlines awards online. Plus, there are no blackout dates and you can also use HawaiianMiles to buy or upgrade any seat on the plane, which means that award availability is plentiful.

Hawaiian Airlines provides a detailed set of award charts that include the exact award prices for every one of their routes in every cabin class.

However, these award charts often only allow you to predict the actual price of an award within a range and don’t give you an exact price. For instance, here’s the award chart for flights between Hawaii and North America: West Coast:

As you can see, there are different award rates for Main Cabin 1, Main Cabin 2 and so on up to Main Cabin 7. Main Cabin 1 fares cost 20,000 miles and Main Cabin 7 fares cost 95,000 miles, a massive difference of 75,000 miles. And it’s often very difficult to predict which of these fares will apply to your desired travel itinerary. While a flight on a Tuesday during off-peak season would probably be considered a Main Cabin 1 fare, a flight on a Friday before a long weekend would probably be considered a Main Cabin 6 or 7 fare. Then, there are all of the other different fares within that range.

So, while Hawaiian Airlines doesn’t use a dynamic pricing model per se, its award prices will still vary considerably based on demand and time of the year. This makes it difficult to find Hawaiian Airlines-operated award flights that offer outsized value. Still, you can consistently find decent value if you do some searching.

In case you were wondering about the “Discounted Award Amount” column on the award chart above, these are the award prices paid by Pualani Gold and Platinum members, who receive special rates on Hawaiian Airlines award flights when booking online. So, having Pualani Elite status makes it considerably easier to get good value out of your HawaiianMiles.

Flying with Partners

Booking partner award flights is a great way to get good value out of your HawaiianMiles. Unfortunately, finding partner award availability and booking partner awards can be a bit of a hassle, considering that they can only be booked over the phone by calling the Hawaiian Airlines service center. It’s also worth noting that HawaiianMiles can only be redeemed for round-trip partner awards (and not multi-city or one-way flights).

But, if you’re willing to do some research, you can often find some solid value per mile when redeeming for partner awards. Hawaiian Airlines publishes a separate award chart for each of its airline partners, all of which you can find on the Hawaiian Airlines website.

These partner award charts have several noteworthy sweet spots that are worth taking advantage of if you’re willing to search for availability and book your award flight over the phone. Here are a few sweet spots to look out for.

Round-Trip Business Class Flights within Asia on Korean Air for 60,000 Miles

According to the Hawaiian Airlines Korean Air partner award chart, round-trip Korean Air-operated Business Class flights within Asia cost 60,00 HawaiianMiles.

For instance, if you could find award availability, you could book a round-trip Business Class flight between Seoul, South Korea, and Jakarta, Indonesia, for 60,000 HawaiianMiles. This is a solid deal, considering that the cash rates for these flights routinely exceed $1,000. For instance, we found a cash flight for this route on Korean Air for 1,489,300 South Korean won (which is equal to about $1,110 at the current exchange rate).

If you were to find Business Class award space on that flight through HawaiianMiles, then this redemption would yield a redemption value of over 1.8 cents per mile, which is pretty good.

Round-Trip Economy Class Flights within Australia on Virgin Australia for 20,000 Miles

According to the Hawaiian Airlines partner award chart for Virgin Australia, you can book round-trip Economy Class award flights within Australia that are under 1,000 miles in distance for 20,000 HawaiianMiles.

For instance, you could book a round-trip Economy Class flight between Brisbane and Mount Isa (with a distance of 977 miles) for 20,000 HawaiianMiles. Cash flights on this route usually cost at least $500. We found a flight itinerary on this route available through Virgin Australia’s website for about 850 Australian dollars (which is equal to about $545 at the current conversion rate).

Therefore, if you were able to book this flight itinerary with 20,000 HawaiianMiles instead, you’d be getting a redemption value of over 2.7 cents per mile, which is very good.

As previously mentioned, you’ll have to call the Hawaiian Airlines service center to check for award availability as well as to book partner awards. This can make booking partner awards fairly difficult and time-consuming. However, if you have a balance of HawaiianMiles, it may be worth it to do some digging. Some partner awards can offer pretty good value as demonstrated by the examples above.

Hotel Stays

In addition to earning HawaiianMiles on hotel stays through the Hotel Awards portal, you can also elect to spend miles to cover the cost of your hotel stay. Unfortunately, doing so typically provides a pretty low value per mile.

Still, if you want to use your HawaiianMiles to book a hotel stay at one of more than 300,000 locations worldwide, you can do so by visiting hotelawards.hawaiianairlines.com and choosing the “Spend Miles” option. Then, enter your destination, travel dates and number of rooms and press the “Search” button. After that, you’ll be presented with a list of options that match your search query and their respective costs in miles.

As previously mentioned, booking hotel stays through the Hotel Awards portal doesn’t provide very good value per mile. For instance, we found a stay at the Residence Inn by Marriott Las Vegas South for 168,000 miles per night.

If you were to book the same stay with cash, it would cost you $859 per night. Thus, this redemption would yield a value of about 0.5 cents per mile, which is very poor.

You’re much better off saving your miles for flight awards than spending them on hotel stays through Hawaiian Airlines Hotel Awards.

Car Rentals

You also have the option to redeem your HawaiianMiles for car rentals with Avis, Budget and Payless. Unfortunately, redeeming your miles this way typically provides very poor value. However, if you want to use your HawaiianMiles to book rental cars, you can do so by visiting cars.cartrawler.com/hawaiianair/en-us/ and selecting the “Redeem Miles” option.

Then, you can enter your pick-up location, pick-up and drop-off dates and driver age and hit the “Search” button. From there, you’ll be brought to a list of results that match your search query.

Once again, though, these redemptions tend to provide poor value per mile. For instance, we found an Economy rental available at Honolulu Daniel K. Inouye Airport for 6,300 miles per day from Budget.

If you were to book this same rental with cash, it would cost you $48.12 per day.

Thus, this redemption would provide a value of about 0.7 cents per mile, which isn’t good. In most cases, you’re better off paying for your car rental with cash and saving your HawaiianMiles for a flight award.

Gift Cards

Hawaiian Airlines gives you the option to redeem your miles for gift cards at certain retail partners. Unfortunately, when redeeming your miles this way, you’ll typically get 0.5 cents per mile, which is very poor. The following table includes all of the gift cards that you can redeem your miles for:

When it comes to the Maui Jim sunglasses redemption, the brand’s sunglasses usually cost around $200, meaning that this redemption would give you a value of around 0.5 cents per mile as well, which is very poor.

To redeem your miles for gift cards, you can either submit a request form through the Hawaiian Airlines website, request a redemption using the website’s live chat feature or call the Hawaiian Airlines service center.

Redeem for Marriott Bonvoy Points

Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles can be redeemed for Marriott Bonvoy points at a transfer rate of 2:1. So, for instance, if you were to transfer 20,000 HawaiianMiles, you would receive 10,000 Bonvoy points. As you can see, this is a very bad deal.

You can transfer HawaiianMiles to Marriott Bonvoy in increments of 5,000 miles, and you can transfer a maximum of 25,000 miles per month. These transfers usually take 6-8 weeks to transfer.

Donate Miles

If you want to use your HawaiianMiles to benefit a good cause, Hawaiian Airlines gives you the option to donate your miles to one of their partner charities. Here is the current list of charities to which you can donate your miles:

It’s not clear how much Hawaiian Airlines will donate to each charity per mile donated. However, if you have a balance of HawaiianMiles and you want to use it to benefit a good cause, then donating your miles is a great way to do so.

The Bottom Line

If you live in Hawaii, then the Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles program should be on your radar. This airline operates more flights between the Hawaiian islands and the contiguous 48 U.S. states than any other airline. And, by joining the HawaiianMiles program, you can earn miles on flights operated by Hawaiian Airlines and its airline partners, which can eventually lead to free award flights.

However, for many of our readers, the best way to rack up a balance of HawaiianMiles is going to be to transfer points into the program from American Express Membership Rewards. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to pay Amex’s infamous “excise tax offset fee” of $0.0006 per point on every transfer. Still, transferring Amex points to HawaiianMiles may be a good idea if you have a certain Hawaiian Airlines award flight in mind.

When it comes to redeeming HawaiianMiles for partner award flights, doing so can be fairly time-consuming and difficult as partner awards can only be booked over the phone and you can only book round-trip partner awards (not one-way or multi-city flights). If you’re willing to do that, though, you can find some solid value on Korean Air, Virgin Australia and other partner awards.

All in all, Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles is a program worth paying attention to, specifically for those interested in booking award flights between Hawaii and the mainland U.S. However, this program could also help you book travel between the U.S. and Asia, between Asia and Australia and to many other destinations across the globe.