Review: Hawaiian Airlines First Class (JFK to HNL) on an Airbus A330-200
What: 2 First Class tickets with a 15-month old lap baby. We are milking the lap baby in business/first while we still can -- time flies and before we know it she'll be 2, but for domestic flights in coach, she gets her own seat.
Cost: 80K Hawaiian Miles per person one-way. This is kind of a ridiculous amount of miles when you consider that 35,000 HawaiianMiles will get you a roundtrip ticket in coach from anywhere in Hawaii to anywhere on the mainland U.S., including all the way to New York. But oh well! For nearly 11 hours straight on a flight with a 1.5 year old, it was totally worth it. We converted American Express Membership Rewards points to HawaiianMiles in order to have enough to cover the 160K mile cost.
Bottom line: Our flight was stellar. We were apprehensive about flying for nearly 11 hours straight with our almost-year-and-a-half old baby (especially since she was very hard to entertain on the flight over from HNL to Portland), but she did great. The lay-flat seats helped, too. A lot. And our flight crew was super sweet, we couldn't have asked for nicer flight attendants- shoutout to Sarah, our purser! We loved her.
Hawaiian uses an Airbus A330-200 (seat map via Seat Guru here) to fly from JFK to HNL and we chose seats H/J in row 1. The lav was in front of A/B so we weren't too bothered by others getting up to use the restroom.
Before takeoff you're offered a complimentary mai tai, sparkling wine, or other beverage of your choice. I chose water because I was feeling boring and flights are super dehydrating!
The seats on this aircraft fully recline to lay flat and this pillow is GENIUS. It straps onto the seat back and stays in place. I forgot to take a picture of the bedding but it was also really cute - a bright pink Sig Zane-print blanket and a plain grey featherbed to lay on. My daughter loved the footrest - it was just her size and the perfect place for playing games on the iPad (after takeoff and landing of course). The flight attendants kept coming by and saying how adorable she was in her own little chair. 😀
First course: a nice watermelon salad with feta and tomatoes. The bread was not great (too hard and not warm!), but the baby doesn't really know the difference, so she ate most of it. 😂
Entree: I selected the vegetarian option - bowtie pasta with tomatoes and mushrooms. The noodles were a little overcooked, but it was yum. (But I am one of those people who like plane food (there’s something about the novelty of it… so take my advice with a grain of salt!) [Update October 2018 - we had terrible food in first class on Aer Lingus and Alaskan on our September trip, so I can say with confidence that the Hawaiian flight’s food was legitimately good for plane food]
Husband's entree - beef and a cous cous. The cous cous was really good and the baby ate most of it.
Instead of seatback entertainment, Hawaiian first class gets these MASSIVE iPads to watch movies and tv on. You stick them on these little sticks that pop out of the center console. It was cool. 🤷🏻♀️
They dim the cabin lights for people to rest and it created a nice ambiance and I loved the little pinpoint lights in the back (they reminded me of a constellation).
This is us, fully reclined to lay flat (and with another pillow for me). Isn't she an angel? (A sweaty little angel...) She took two naps on this flight, and we were like hallelujah!
During the flight there were self-service snacks of potato chips and cookies, and about an hour before landing they had a second meal service where they served pastrami ruebens. They were not as good as the ones from Katz's (duh 😝) but I definitely ate the whole thing anyway.
Home, yay! We love to travel but it's always so nice to come home to Hawaii (we miss our cats!) and see our pretty reef runway.
