The old days of 5000 mile awards for interisland roundtrips are going away October 15th. Redemptions on IslandAir go up to 5000 miles each way. The same holds for new partner Hawaiian Airlines.
It’s not surprising, really, as that’s a fairly standard price across other carriers for such awards and also because the price of interisland travel has risen somewhat since Aloha’s bankruptcy and closure. But sad nonetheless.
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I’ve used this award a lot over the years to fly my family around Hawaii when we visit. When visiting Kauai, Maui or the Big Island, it’s now even more valuable to be booked directly there (as opposed to just HNL). Dirt cheap interisland travel is dead (for both points and money — cheapest roundtrip interisland fare is now north of $140).
Unfortunately, Hawaiian has also recently raised the mileage for one-way interisland reward travel. It now starts at 7500. This was valuable when, say, you were booked into Kauai and out of Maui. It’s about $100 one way to buy a non-HNL interisland ticket.
is this now better than the SPG AmEx?