Flying Southwest to Big Island, Hawaii
019 marks the beginning of the long awaited Southwest flights to Hawaii. The first flight took off from Oakland to Honolulu in March 2019. At the time of this post, Southwest offers 4 direct flights from the mainland: Oakland (OAK) to Honolulu (HNL) on Oahu, San Jose (SJC) to Honolulu (HNL) on Oahu, Oakland (OAK) to Kahului (OGG) on Maui, and San Jose (SJC) to Kahului (OGG) on Maui. Southwest also flies to Kona (KOA) on Big Island via Honolulu. Besides Hawaiian Airlines, Southwest is the only other major commercial airline that flies inter-island routes*, which is great news for creating some competition in Hawaii!
For my trip this Memorial Day weekend, I flew to Kona (KOA).