A Flight to Hawaii is a Unique Experience

The islands of Hawaii are only accessible by land or by water.  If you take a boat, that probably means taking a cruise.  These Hawaiian cruises are great, but if you would rather spend more time on the islands themselves rather than the ship, it is faster to fly.  However, a flight to Hawaii can seem rather long.  Some flights, even if they are non stop, can take up to fourteen hours if you are departing from cities in the northeast United States.  This partially depends on wind conditions in the upper flight paths.

Be sure to get a window seat, because with clear weather, a flight to Hawaii means that passengers can see a lot of different parts of North America they did not expect to see.  This is because if you are on a non-stop flight from Chicago for example, it is faster for the plane to fly north towards the Artic and then south.  It would actually take longer to fly straight to Hawaii because the curvature of the earth towards the equator adds more miles to the flight to Hawaii.

A long flight to Hawaii can become tedious.  If you are not great at sitting in an upright chair for any length of time, you might want to consider a few different options.  Flying first class is one of them.  Although it much more expensive, you have larger seats and more services available than in coach class.  If you can’t afford a first class flight to Hawaii, there are other things you can do.  Many people don’t sleep the night before and choose to sleep on the flight to Hawaii instead.  Other people bring books, magazines, or their laptop to occupy their time.

Probably the most unnerving part of a flight to Hawaii is when the plane begins its descent into the Hawaii International Airport.  As you are landing, you can clearly see the water outside of the cabin, but not the runways.  When you finally do make eye contact with land, it looks like the runway ends right into the Pacific Ocean.  This is merely a matter of depth perception, because the runways at the airport are more than adequate to land most commercial flights.

Airlines pay special attention to aircraft whose destination is Hawaii.  Like international flights, they are well aware that there are no places to make an emergency landing once the flight leaves the mainland.  At this point the rest of the flight is over water.  If a problem does develop however, expect to be returning to the nearest airport on the mainland.