Hawaiian Airlines

Hawaiian Airlines is the carrier people use to move between the Hawaiian Islands and to connect Hawaii with the mainland and a few Pacific routes. By our assessment, it is best at being the home airline of the islands: the route map is practical, the branding is clear, and the service is built around leisure travel rather than hard-nosed business flying. The trade-off is that island flying is still island flying, with weather, connections, and limited route choices shaping the experience more than a giant hub network would. In practice you think in seat maps, inter-island hops, and whether the schedule lines up with a vacation or a connection. Compared with the big U.S. network airlines, Hawaiian Airlines is smaller and more regional, but that focus is also the point. Hawaiian Airlines is based in the United States, and it feels like an airline made for place rather than scale.