Hawaii Inter-Island Flights With Points: Three Ways We Paid

~8 min read · Last updated: September 2026

Our check-out at Kings’ Land was 10 am and our flight to Honolulu was at 3:35 pm, which is five and a half hours of having nowhere to put two teenagers, too many bags, and a rental car that has to go back. The only reason it was not a problem is that we are HGV owners, so we booked the owner’s day-use room from 1 to 2 pm to shower and change before the airport. From 10 to 1? Relaxifying, as Shana calls it. Then the four of us got on the same short flight from Kona to Honolulu.

One thing I did not expect to have an opinion about: there is something to be said for open air terminals. The only other one I can really think of that I have spent some time at is Palm Springs, and I can honestly say I prefer Kona. It might be slightly more humid, but it gets nowhere near as hot. I do enjoy the art work and walking around the different shops that all sell the same tourist stuff.

At a Glance

🎯 What this covers

one inter-island hop, Kona to Honolulu, bought for four people three different ways

📅 When we did this

Monday, June 1, 2026, booked on January 9, 2026

💰 Cost

$94.90 a seat in cash, or 8,000 Rapid Rewards points plus $5.60

⏱️ Time required

55 minutes in the air and most of a day on the ground

📊 Difficulty

easy, because Southwest sells every seat as an award seat

👥 Best for

anyone moving a group between islands with different balances

⚠️ Watch out for

the award price tracks the cash fare, so an expensive day in cash is an expensive day in points

The Setup: Four Travelers, One 55-Minute Flight

The Big Island half of this trip was Shana and me, one of ours, and the friend he brought. The Oahu half had a reason of its own: one of ours lives in Honolulu, and he had a list of his and his girlfriend’s favorite Oahu hikes lined up for us, some of their favorite food places, and sites to see. That matters later, and not for the reason you would guess.

As for the flight, what we had between the four of us was not one single source to pay for the flight- it was three. Shana had Rapid Rewards points, earned on her Southwest card when she hit the sign-up bonus. One of our kids had a Southwest flight credit sitting in his account, left over from a Colorado Springs to Norfolk flight that got cancelled. His friend and I had neither, which on Southwest is not the disadvantage it sounds like.

Inter-island flights are not awesome. They’re not terrible, they just kinda tend to kill a day. Flying into Honolulu kills more of a day than most, because the traffic when you get there is terrible. We knew that going in, which is why the cheapest ticket was never the thing we were optimizing. We were trying to time our arrival with Chuck’s work schedule so he could pick us up. That was not to be.

How We Booked It

We booked on January 9, 2026 for June 1. That is 143 days out, and on this route the booking window is not where the money is.

There was no award search. There is nothing to search. Southwest does not publish an award chart and does not hold back award seats: every seat is available for points, and the points price is the cash price run through a multiplier. Since March 2025 that multiplier has been fully variable rather than fixed, which means your points are worth more on a cheap day and less on an expensive one. So the first real decision was not which airline or which program. It was who in the party was paying with what.

That produced three separate bookings on one flight, and the reason is worth knowing before you try to be clever with a group. A Southwest flight credit is not a thing you can hand to somebody else on a whim. The transferable kind only moves between two Rapid Rewards members, one time, and once it moves it does not move back (Southwest publishes the terms here). So the credit stayed on the ticket of the person who already had it, Shana booked her own with her own points, and the friend and I went on one cash confirmation together.

We bought Choice Preferred rather than the cheapest bucket. That is refundable, it includes seat selection and early boarding, and it earns 10 points per dollar on the base fare. My cash ticket earned about 782 points. The friend’s earned nothing at all, because he has no Rapid Rewards number and the receipt still says “Join or Log in” where a member number would go.

The Numbers: What It Cost vs. What It Would Have Cost

Metric	Our booking	Cash price
Out of pocket	$5.60	$94.90
Points spent	8,000 Rapid Rewards	0
Cents per point	1.12cpp	n/a
Value against the published valuations	Below	n/a

The cash side is not complicated. Two tickets came to $189.80, which is $94.90 each: a base fare of $78.14 and $16.76 in government taxes and fees. Southwest adds no carrier surcharge. Shana’s award ticket cost 8,000 points and $5.60, which is the September 11 security fee and nothing else.

So the arithmetic is $94.90 minus $5.60, divided by 8,000, which is 1.12 cents a point. The Points Guy valued Rapid Rewards at 1.25 cents in August 2026 and other outlets run higher. By any of them, this was a below-average redemption, and it was below average for a structural reason rather than a mistake: when the award price is derived from the cash price, there is no sweet spot to find. You get roughly the same number on every Southwest flight you will ever book.

Was It Worth It?

Yes, and the actual flight had very little to do with it.

Shana booked the window and I booked the aisle, hoping the middle would be left open. When we got on the plane, the middle seat was obviously not serviceable. The cushion wasn’t properly secured to the frame, it was off kilter and just not right. The seat belt wasn’t properly threaded either, and when we pointed it out to the flight attendant he told us it had been cleared by maintenance. Um, okay. Towards the end of boarding some poor man got on and had that seat. He saw it, sighed, and tried to position the cushion. To no avail, it would not set properly, so he just sat down and buckled in. Yup, that is South-worst.

The flight itself did what it was supposed to do. On time, smooth boarding, 55 minutes, a crew that was perfectly fine. The rest of the day was the part that costs you. Thankfully we were not renting a car and just had to navigate our way to the ride share pick-up zone, which with all the construction at Honolulu was not easy. But we made it and that was just fine. Our driver did not speak English, so we relied on Google Translate and the exact booking address to make sure we were headed to the right Hilton Grand Vacations property, because there are several of them within a few blocks of each other. He knew where he was going better than we did and for that we were grateful.

What We’d Do Differently

Here is the thing that actually cost me something on this flight, and it was not money.

Like I mentioned, one of our kids lives in Honolulu and was going to take us on some of his and his girlfriend’s favorite Oahu hikes. So I had brought my new pack, the one I am planning on bringing on the Camino. I wanted to test it out not only on some more advanced trails but also on an airplane. Well, I’m glad I did, because that pack DID NOT FIT under the seat in front of me. No sir, it did not. Shana had her old Camino pack, the one she used on the Francés and is the same size as my old pack, and it fit perfectly. And now I have some decisions to make about my gear before I head out on the Camino in a few months. Ugh.

A 55-minute hop is the cheapest gear test you will ever run. Take the thing you are worried about and put it under the seat.

The other one is honest rather than clever: we never priced the alternatives. Hawaiian flies this route, Mokulele flies it on turboprops, and we looked at neither, because the decision had already been made for us by the balances we were holding. That was fine for us and it might not be fine for you. If nobody in your party is carrying Southwest points or a Southwest credit, price all three before you assume this is the flight to use points on.

How to Book This Award

Start with the inventory rather than the search. Write down what every traveler in the party actually holds (points, credits, companion passes, a card that earns on this airline) because on a route like this the currency decides the booking and not the other way around.

Then book directly with the airline. Aggregators do not beat the direct price on these short routes, and a direct booking is far easier to change when a flight time moves, which on an inter-island schedule it does.

Split the party across as many confirmations as you have funding sources. Trying to collapse four travelers into one booking is how a credit gets stranded or a points balance gets spent on a seat that somebody else could have covered for nothing.

Finally, buy the fare bucket that matches the risk, rather than the lowest number on the page. We took the refundable one on a trip that was still moving around, and I would do that again.

If you would rather have that arithmetic run against your own trip and your own balances instead of in the abstract, that is exactly the thing we do for clients.

Found this helpful? 📌 Pin it for your trip planning.

For the rest of this trip, the Big Island half is collected on our Big Island travel guide and the Oahu half on our Oahu travel guide. If what you actually want is how to spend the hours around a flight like this one rather than how to pay for it, we wrote that up separately as a Hawaiian inter-island travel day. And the wider version of the argument in this post, across five bookings from the same trip, is when not to use points.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the cheapest way to fly between the Hawaiian islands?

Book directly with Hawaiian, Southwest or Mokulele, and book early. One-way fares on the main routes generally run about $50 to $150, and ours came to $94.90 for Kona to Honolulu bought 143 days ahead. Aggregators rarely beat the airline’s own price on a flight this short.

Can you use Southwest points for Hawaii inter-island flights?

Yes, and availability is never the obstacle. Southwest sells every seat as an award seat, so if the flight has a seat you can book it with points. The catch is the price: awards are priced off the cash fare, so an expensive flight costs a lot of points.

Can someone else use my Southwest flight credit?

Only under narrow conditions. A Transferable Flight Credit moves between two Rapid Rewards members once, it cannot be reversed, and the cheapest fares do not generate one at all. In practice, assume a credit stays with the person who earned it and book that traveler separately.

Is 1.12 cents per point a good Southwest redemption?

It is slightly below average. The Points Guy valued Rapid Rewards at 1.25 cents in August 2026. But because Southwest prices awards off the cash fare, almost every redemption lands near that figure, so the number tells you far less here than it would in a program with an award chart.

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