Southwest will be offering flights between California & Hawaii, starting in May. Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego. They are offering inauguration specials as low as $49 one way. According to news reports, not all flight sales posted yet. And, my quick check shows a lot of sold out flights.
They are also offering inter-island flights.
The reason they are starting these flights is that they just got official approval to go there. They’ve been doing test flights for a few months.
We were once on a flight from Melbourne to Christchurch NZ - not dissimilar - and after an hour it diverted to Brisbane. It had some technical drama to do with aircon and air pressure. They allowed us to continue on, so long as we went via Norfolk Island - we had to stay within 500 nm of a biggish airport. Which wasn't particularly reassuring.
But it was New Year's Eve, so they served us the good champagne from the pointy end of the plane.
Here's a report on one of their ETOPS certification flights
ETOPS is short for Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards. (Or alternately according to a friend at Boeing- Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim. She reassures me that the company takes ETOPS issues very seriously despite the nerd humor)
This topic has been automatically locked due to inactivity. Email community@lonelyplanet.com if you would like to add to this topic and we'll unlock it for you.
