 |
| Molokai. 'The Friendly Island' |
After boarding, you're able to immediately connect if you'd like and it's just a matter of selecting Starlink for wi-fi on your phone and not having to go to an airline page or app to connect. I hope with the recent merger of HA and AS that Alaska considers adding Starlink to their flights since they are pretty much our airline of choice when we fly anywhere on the mainland US. But for Hawaii trips, I will definitely fly HA now for the free Starlink internet service but also specifically for another reason; widebody aircraft availability to choose from. Here's a brief update about Hawaiian's addition making industry news.
During our trip in March, ML was in contact with a former co-worker of mine while in flight via wi-fi who I call her travel-buddy (TB for this post). TB's been on quite a few 'girl trips' with ML and has pretty much been accepted in the family as one of the aunties and sistahs since arriving here from an assignment in Germany a few years ago. Anyway, TB and her family were also heading to Honolulu this particular trip but on a Delta Airlines flight that left an hour before our AS flight. ML and TB were texting back and forth at times once airborne, and at one point where our flight was going through a bit of moderate chop at 32,000 feet for a while, TB's flight was at 40,000 feet and didn't encounter any turbulence at all flying ahead of us. ML told me that TB let her know that, and as I was also connected on AS's wi-fi and on a flight tracker app, that told me where our respective flights were at altitude and airspeed. TB's aircraft was an A-330 widebody that DL uses in addition to other narrow-body aircraft for this route. I told ML that the next time we go to Hawaii (little did I know at the time that we'd be going again before the end of the year), that we're booking a flight with either DL or HA on a wide-body aircraft that flies higher and faster. For the trip we flew to Honolulu on last week and back to Seattle this week, it was pretty smooth even with some systems in our way that we seemed to fly over or detoured around.
So the reason we returned to Oahu for a second time this year was to celebrate my uncle's life. He was my dad's younger brother and the last of the men from my dad's generation of the family. The memorial service was nice, with us seeing relatives we haven't seen in a while, and also meeting friends of my uncle who were long-time co-workers or golf buds and who also shared some great and touching stories about times spent with him over the years. The Aloha at the service was strong and reminded me that this is what Hawaii is about when it comes to living on the island. When my cousin notified me of my uncle's passing several weeks ago, it was without question that we'd be going back for his funeral, and as soon as we had the date of the service, ML booked us on a flight remembering what I'd said during our last trip about a wide-body flight.
Although the timeliness of returning to Hawaii was unexpected and bittersweet, it was memorable as every trip is. I will never get tired of returning to the islands despite the reason this time, although preferably more for happy reasons in future trips.
