Hawaiian A330-200 - Honolulu to Los Angeles (Takeoff)

June 24, 2024
Flight 1002
Taken from Seat 2J
Departure Time: 2:09 p.m.
Arrival Time: 10:21 p.m.
Flight Time: 5 hrs 12 mins
Aircraft: N386HA "Heiheionakeiki"

00:00 - Intro
04:52 - Announcement and Air Start
12:30 - Pushback
16:30 - Second engine start
19:22 - Taxi
29:47 - Takeoff
39:00 - Climb with views of the islands/Inflight

After our delayed flight to Lihu'e a week prior, we were looking for our return flight. Since the trip was unexpected for my grandmother's funeral, we decided we would route ourselves through LAX (instead of nonstop to Seattle) to fly on Hawaiian's 787 in their Leihoku Suites. Unfortunately, the evening before our flight, we received an email saying there had been a change to our flight. After reviewing the app for a few minutes and not really seeing any changes, I noticed the aircraft type had changed from the 787 to the A330. The entire reason for this flight was for the 787 so we were very disappointed. Our 3.5 year old son was in tears because he had been expecting the 787.

After flying on the 717 to Honolulu, we stopped on the taxiway due to our gate being occupied. We waited over 30 minutes (which was longer than the actual flight)!

Once we boarded, the captain invited our son to the cockpit to apologize for him not getting to fly the 787, so at least the cockpit and cabin crew were apologetic and that made up for some of the disappointment. Then we were told there would be a slight delay as the aircraft's APU was inoperable and we needed to wait for the air cart to start our engine at the gate.

The first class cabin was completely full. Besides the 3 of us, there was another couple and 2 larger families. One of the families just trashed the area around them by throwing trash onto the floor and not listening to instructions from the cabin crew (on approach they wouldn't put their seats into the upright position and after landing, we stopped short of the gate and one of them just got up and went to the restroom). The other family had 3 kids, one of which was around 2. That child basically screamed the entire flight because there was no Wifi onboard and the mother couldn't play Instagram videos for her. We had to endure hours of screaming at the top of her lungs to the point she was choking. And none of the adults did anything about it.

I would like to have included the landing, however, I just couldn't subject any viewers to the child's screams.