Separate tickets vs one ticket?

I'm not a frequent flier either and have always booked flights with connections on one ticket. However, in this case, you aren't making connections. The individual flights are on different days so the risk of missing a connection isn't there. For a $600 savings I would book the tickets separately on the individual airlines' sites.

If you can save that much money then go for it. I do this quite often but then I do very complex trips. My recent trip to the Canary Islands involved 5 separate tickets

Buying separate tickets doesn’t seem terribly risky in your case as you have plenty of time between flights.

The advantage of having your flights on one ticket is if you have to change or cancel your entire trip, it is one ”change” (rather than two or three) which may result in lower change fees (if they apply). Other than that, I can’t think of any particular advantage for your scenario, particularly since the price is lower.

Thanks very much for the quick input, very helpful. Seems except for the risk of extra hassle and possible extra fees if we’d need to change our entire trip there’s no reason to worry about it. Separate tickets it is.

When the suggestion is made to travel on one ticket it usually refers to connections.

What you are doing is not a connection. I do what you plan to do all the time. And I am a frequent flier.

I always price out multiple one-ways vs round trips or open-jaws. I usually hope for 'same value equivalent', but I'll even pay a couple of dollars more for the flexibility of separate tickets.

It rarely pays off for international and is rarely a discount for domestic, but there's no reason not to do it.

Thanks again. All these comments have made me think differently about looking at separate tickets in the future.

I'm not saying it happens all the time, or its their policy, but for us (I have a daughter that is a grad student in Honolulu) Hawaiian Air has been extremely flexible. She has shown up at the airport late and they put her on the next flight, no change charge. She has shown up at the airport and able to make an earlier flight so they put her on that.

In terms on the rest of the itinerary, with separate tickets on separate airlines, we've done that frequently, mostly purchasing one way tickets with the same airline. When the tickets are not connected, there is the risk if one flight is cancelled/changed, you may not be work out a change or cancel the other flights. However, your airlines have multiple flights a day. Hawaiian, typically almost every hour. So if something happens to one flight, I think you'd be able to work with the airline to figure something out.

Your itinerary does not involve tight connections.

Also, most tickets are changeable these days except a basic economy type ticket.

Bottom line, I would do it.

This is always the way we have flown inter-island in Hawaii. It never even occurred to us to link those tickets to our trip to and from the continental US to Hawaii.

Your example shows 3 distinct segments separated by one week each. In your case, there is no risk of missing a connection since you don’t have any connections. If the savings are substantial and you are not concerned about amassing FF miles or elite status with just one airline, then why not. 👍🏻

I agree with what others have posted, the most important flight is the round trip from the mainland. In all the many years we’ve flown to Hawaii we’ve never connected inter-island flights together with the round trip. In the past there’s always been a wide selection of inter-island flights at low prices. So I can’t imagine any advantage to connecting them to your mainland flight.

All these comments have made me think differently about looking at separate tickets in the future.

You need to look at the specific itinerary and timing. Since there is a week between each of your flights it makes sense to book this way. If it was a few hour, then you would find a lot folks on these forums telling you not to book in this manner.

Most of my trips are on different tickets unless I have a connection.

Ed, after years of going to Hawaii, the only time I would want an inter-island flight on the same ticket would be if it was part of a connection from the mainland.

Margie, I'm not sure I'm following. Although I often book my travel with one way tickets (after checking all options), for Hawaii and from Minneapolis, it has always made sense for us to book multicity on one ticket. We almost always go to two islands.

For example, one year, it was Minneapolis, Lihue, Honolulu, Minneapolis. This year its Minneapolis, Seattle (4 days), Kahului(7 nights), Honolulu (4 nights), Minneapolis. Both trips were booked multicity on Delta. It pays to check various options. As the OP found with her home town and itinerary its cheaper to do three one way tickets. For us, we booked multicity with Delta, cheaper to have it all connected than doing Hawaiian or Southwest for the interisland. For Kauai, Delta uses Hawaiian, or they did at the time, but it still is a "Delta" flight.

It's a lot of work, but with the way we travel, it just makes a lot of sense to check pricing on one ways vs, multicity and round trip.

SO in this case you are great. Here's what you don't want to do.

ATL to LAX on Delta and then 2 hours later LAX to Kona an Hawaiian .... that's the "separate" ticket mess that can blow up on you! But a week between flights... no problem!