Back in May, Hawaiian Airlines revealed its new business class products. For the first time in the Airline’s history they’d be offering lie-flat seats. While new for Hawaiian, lie-flat seats are nothing new. But, since Hawaiian primarily serves leisure travelers, it’s understandable that they’d take their time deciding. And over the past couple of months they slowly began adding aircraft equipped with the new lie-flat seats to its fleet. The seats weren’t bookable at the time; rather aircraft were assigned to routes at random. But now the Hawaiian Air lie-flat seats are now bookable for travel beginning December 5, 2016.
The new lie-flat seats will be available on the following routes out of Honolulu:
- Narita, Japan
- Brisbane, Australia
- Sydney, Australia
- Aukland, New Zealand
Routes being served with the new premium cabin will expand as more aircraft are retrofitted with the new seats. Hawaiian should complete retrofitting all 23 of its A330-200s by the end of 2017.
The routes the seats are being used on initially make sense, as they are among Hawaiian’s longest. It’s interesting, though, that they will be using these aircraft on only one of their two Tokyo routes. But even that’s understandable, as Haneda likely has much higher demand than Narita does due to it’s much more convenient location.
What Hawaiian didn’t reveal at the time of the new premium cabin reveal, however, was what changes would be made to their soft product. As expected, though, Hawaiian has made changes to these elements. The new premium cabin will now feature amenities kits designed by famous local designer Sig Zane. This includes a Sig Zane designed quilt and pillow.
If Sig Zane sounds familiar to you, it’s because he’s also responsible for the livery on Hawaiian’s commuter subsidiary Ohana by Hawaiian.
Hawaiian’s meal service will also see some tweaks including new dinnerware, linens and trays.
The menu will continue to be developed by Hawaiian Air’s Executive Chef, Chai Chaowasaree.
The new catering will even include a selection of specialty cocktails, in addition to a full bar including beers, and wines curated by Hawaii Master Sommelier Chuck Furuya.
Premium cabin customer will also receive complimentary access to Hawaiian’s Plumeria Lounge.
Want to redeem miles for these seats? Award tickets redeem via HawaiianMiles will cost you 130,000 miles (saver) to 260,000 miles (flex) for the initial four routes. A better value, of course, would be to redeem Korean SkyPass miles, which transfer 1:1 from Chase Ultimate Rewards. A roundtrip premium cabin award ticket will cost you just 140,000 miles to Australia and Japan.
Paid tickets appear to begin at about $2,800 roundtrip. Interestingly, prices are often the same on both Narita and Haneda routes, despite only Narita having the lie-flat seat.