How Much are Hawaiian Airlines Miles Worth?
These miles are easier to earn than others, but worth average value.
Whether you’re island- or mainland-based, flying between the two can earn a lot of Hawaiian Airlines miles in a hurry. If you’re sitting on a pile of them, you’re probably wondering how much they’re worth.
Based on our research, Hawaiian miles have a value of 1 cent each. This is a baseline value, drawn from real-world data on hundreds of economy routes, not a maximized value. In other words, you should aim for award redemptions that offer 1 cent or more in value from your Hawaiian miles.
What does this value mean?
Our estimated value of 1 cent per Hawaiian mile provides a baseline value you can compare against your own redemptions.
This is the value you can expect to get from your Hawaiian miles by booking an arbitrary award flight. This means you can get more value by comparing options and using more advanced search techniques. It also means you can get less value than this if you’re not careful.
» Learn more: Guide to booking award flights with Hawaiian Airlines
How do Hawaiian miles compare to other airlines?
Hawaiian miles are worth an average amount as far as airline miles go. However, because Hawaiian is one of the few airlines that still awards miles based on the distance flown rather than the amount spent, it’s somewhat easier to rack up a bunch of miles. So the raw value matters less than the overall value of flying and earning with Hawaiian.
How to convert Hawaiian miles to dollars
Thinking about signing up for a Hawaiian credit card or other promotion and want to know how much it’s worth? Use this calculator to convert your stash of Hawaiian miles to dollars.
What’s the value of Hawaiian miles when booking business class?
For our overall value estimate we only compared main cabin fares. Yet you can often get more raw value from Hawaiian miles (or any airline miles) when booking a premium seat.
Main cabin value | Business class value | |
|---|---|---|
HawaiianMiles | 1 cent | 2.4 cents |
Does this mean you should use Hawaiian miles to book business class? Not necessarily. If you wouldn’t shell out the cash price of business class seats, you probably shouldn’t empty your HawaiianMiles account to do the same. Yet these redemptions do offer far more value for your mile, so it’s a tradeoff.
When’s the best time to use Hawaiian miles?
We compared several different time periods for using miles:
180 days (six months) before departure.
15 days before departure.
Peak winter holiday season (Dec. 22-29).
Here's what the data shows.
Interestingly, Hawaiian did not offer any availability for last-minute business class travel. So that’s worth keeping in mind if you’re looking to use your miles in this way. And traveling during the holidays offered above average value for miles in all cabin classes.
How flexible are Hawaiian miles?
Although Hawaiian miles can be used to book flights on a few partner airlines like JetBlue and Japan Airlines, Hawaiian lacks the deep partner roster of other U.S. carriers.
On the plus side, Hawaiian maintains relatively simple award charts for its partners, so it should be easy to know how many miles it will cost to fly with them. On the other hand, Hawaiian only allows round-trip award bookings with partners, which limits the usefulness of using miles in this way.
How did we determine the value of Hawaiian miles?
We collected hundreds of data points comparing the cash value to award (mile) value for the same routes and dates. That is, we compared the cost of a given ticket in either cash or miles, across many tickets.
This method differs from others in that it looks at actual redemptions rather than hypothetical, maximized redemptions. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a real-world indication of how much these miles are worth, on average. That said, it doesn’t take into account the high-value redemptions that some points enthusiasts seek.
Wondering what you can do with these miles? Check out our guide to the Hawaiian Airlines award chart and our guide to redeeming Hawaiian Airlines miles.
How to Maximize Your Rewards
You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are our picks for the best travel credit cards of 2021, including those best for:
Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
No annual fee: Bank of America® Travel Rewards credit card
Flat-rate travel rewards: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®
Luxury perks: The Platinum Card® from American Express
Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card
