How Much Is a Flight to Hawaii? (2026 Data)

A round-trip flight to Hawaii from the US mainland costs about $483¹ right now, averaged over fares seen in the past month for all US departure airports. Monthly averages over the past year ran from $238¹ in January to $342¹ in June, and by departure city the Honolulu average runs from $441¹ out of Los Angeles to $916¹ out of New York.¹ The sections below break that price down by month, island and departure city.

Demand is close to its peak: 9.53 million² visitors arrived by air in 2024, 93.1%³ of the 2019 record.² Below are current fares by month, island, departure city and booking window, the prices of flights between the islands, the taxes built into every ticket, and the official passenger, seat and fare records behind them.

The average flight cost to Hawaii

So how much is a flight to Hawaii? In late September 2026 the average round trip from the US was $483¹. That figure mixes every mainland airport, every Hawaiian arrival airport and every cabin, and it is a snapshot of prices seen in one month, not a quote for the next search.¹ A single fare can land far from it: the cheapest round trip seen in the five days before the snapshot was $256¹, to Kailua-Kona.¹

Prices by month

Season is the first lever. Hawaii flight prices by month, averaged over the past year with the most extreme prices removed, bottom out in January at $238¹ and February at $243¹, then climb to a summer peak of $342¹ in June and $331¹ in July.¹ June costs 1.44³ times as much as January, a difference of $104³ per ticket.

Fall and winter fares

The months after the summer rush are among the better-value ones. The average flight to Hawaii in October was $280¹, November $275¹, and September $282¹. December climbs to $314¹, still well below June and July.¹ Spring is uneven: April averaged $252¹, below both March ($284¹) and May ($283¹).

Weekday matters less than month. Wednesday is the cheapest departure day, with round trips from $537¹, and Saturday the most expensive, at $662¹ on average.¹ Those two figures come from a different set of prices than the monthly averages, so they show the weekday pattern rather than a typical fare.

Time of day and how far ahead to book

Evening departures are the cheapest, at $471¹ on average in the two weeks before the snapshot, and night flights the most expensive, at $513¹; a night departure costs $42³ more than an evening one.¹ Morning ($475¹) and afternoon ($498¹) sit in between.

Booking time is noisier. Averaged week by week over the past year, the lowest price came 5¹ weeks before departure, at $778¹, and the highest 23¹ weeks out, at $3,354¹.¹ Booking 26 weeks ahead averaged $1,303¹ and the final week $983¹. These weekly averages sit well above the $483¹ headline because they are built from a different, pricier set of fares, so read the shape of the line, not its level: prices ease from about four months out, are lowest five to six weeks before departure, and rise again two to three weeks out.

How much a flight costs to each island

Four airports received every airline seat flown to Hawaii from outside the state in 2024.² Honolulu is the most expensive of them to fly into, at $350¹ on average over the past year.¹ Honolulu, on Oahu, is also by far the busiest: 52%¹ of all flights to Hawaii land there, and Hawaii has 11¹ airports in all.¹ The airport figures below come from a different part of the fare data than the headline average and cover a full year, so compare them with each other, not with the $483¹ month-long average.

Maui, Kauai and the Big Island

If you are wondering how much is a flight to Maui, the average into Kahului, the island's main airport, was $311.24¹.¹ The answer to how much is a flight to Kauai is lower: Lihue averaged $297.76¹, the lowest of the four, and Kona on the Big Island $305.16¹.¹

Honolulu

And how much is a flight to Honolulu? $350.22¹ on average, $52.46³ more than Lihue.¹ Honolulu is also the destination of the most-searched route to Hawaii, Atlanta to Honolulu, which had round trips from $301¹ in the days before the snapshot.¹

Flying between the islands

Hops between the islands are short and priced in a narrow band. So how much is a flight from Oahu to Maui? $164¹ round trip on average over the past 12 months, with most fares between $142¹ and $190¹.¹ The flight takes about 46¹ minutes for 101¹ miles (163³ km).

On the other main routes, the picture is the same. How much is a flight from Oahu to Kauai? $160¹ on average, the cheapest inter-island route in the data.¹ How much is a flight from Oahu to the Big Island? $165¹ to Kailua-Kona.¹

Routes that skip Honolulu cost a little more: how much is a flight from Maui to Kauai? $167¹, and Maui to Kona $176¹, the most expensive of the five.¹ That puts the Hawaii inter-island flight cost average between $160¹ and $176¹ per round trip, a spread of only $16³. Within the islands, a ticket is taxed differently from a mainland one: the 7.5% federal ticket tax applies to the whole inter-island fare, while the Alaska/Hawaii departure tax described further down does not apply.⁴ An Oahu-Maui round trip costs 37.2%³ of the Los Angeles-Honolulu average, so a second island adds more than a third to the price of the flight from the mainland.

How long the flight takes

The average flight time to Hawaii on a nonstop from the US mainland is 7h 10m¹, covering 3,185¹ miles (5,125³ km).¹ That average is pulled up by long flights from the East Coast and the Midwest. The shortest routes all start in Northern California: Oakland to Kahului takes about 5h 18m¹, the quickest nonstop to Hawaii.¹

The average flight duration from Los Angeles to Honolulu is 5h 55m¹ for 2,551¹ miles (4,105³ km), and the average flight time from San Francisco to Hawaii (Honolulu) is 5h 40m¹ for 2,395¹ miles (3,854³ km).¹ From Seattle, the nonstop to Honolulu takes 6h 20m¹; from Chicago, 9h 12m¹; and from New York, 11h 09m¹.¹

Where you fly from sets the price

Distance explains most of the spread between mainland cities. How much is a flight from Los Angeles to Hawaii? Round trips to Honolulu averaged $441¹ over the past 12 months, with most fares between $349¹ and $539¹; that is also the best answer to how much is a flight from California to Hawaii, since Los Angeles has more seats to the islands than any other city.^{1 2} San Francisco averages $490¹.¹

Farther north and inland, prices rise. How much is a flight from Seattle to Hawaii? $537¹ on average, $96³ more than from Los Angeles, and Denver averages $615¹.¹ How much is a flight from Dallas to Hawaii? $699¹, with a usual range of $522¹ to $913¹.¹

How much is a flight from Chicago to Hawaii? $778¹.¹ And how much is a flight from New York to Hawaii? $916¹, the priciest of the seven cities and 2.08³ times the Los Angeles fare, for a flight about twice as long.¹

Per mile, the long routes are no bargain: New York works out to about 18.5³ cents per mile of the one-way distance, against 17.3³ cents from Los Angeles. For a traveler in the Midwest or on the East Coast, that makes a separate cheap flight to the West Coast worth pricing, but only if the connection time is acceptable.

What it costs to fly out of Hawaii

Official fare records show the other direction: the average fare paid by passengers starting their trip at a Hawaiian airport, across all their domestic destinations, taxes included. Passengers starting at Honolulu paid $389.54⁵ on average in 2025, $1.80³ more than the US average of $387.74⁵.⁵ Neighbor-island airports are cheaper: Lihue averaged $283.60⁵ in 2025, Kona $297.60⁵ and Kahului $307.98⁵.⁵

In today's money, flying from Honolulu has become much cheaper. The 2015 average of $385.32⁵ equals $537.67⁵ in 2026 dollars; the 2025 fare, $399.90⁵ in 2026 dollars, is 25.6%³ lower, a steeper real fall than the US average's 24.1%³.⁵ In nominal dollars, the Honolulu fare is almost exactly where it was ten years earlier.

Recent quarters point up again. In the second quarter of 2026 the Honolulu average reached $437.31⁵, $47.77³ above the 2025 full-year average, and the US average $445.26⁵; a single quarter is not a full year, so the comparison shows direction, not the final 2026 level.⁵ So the average flight cost from Honolulu in 2026 is running above every full-year figure since 2015.

How many people fly to Hawaii

Hawaii welcomed 9.53 million² visitors by air in 2024, almost flat on 2023 and still below the 10.24 million² record of 2019.² The pandemic cut arrivals to 2.68 million² in 2020, a fall of 73.9%³, before a rebound to 6.78 million² in 2021. Over the longer run the trend is growth: 6.72 million² in 1990 and 6.95 million² in 2000.

The trend line fits a straight line to the 25 years from 2000 to 2024, the pandemic years included, which flattens it. It reaches about 11.25 million³ visitors a year by 2050, with a 95% range of 6.84³ to 15.67 million³: 1.10³ times the 2019 record, a slow-growth path. It is our calculation, not a forecast, and it says nothing about fares.

Domestic and international arrivals

The recovery has been domestic. Visitors on flights from the US mainland reached 7.90 million² in 2024, 8.9%³ above 2019 and 82.8%³ of all air arrivals.² Arrivals on international flights were 1.64 million², only 54.8%³ of their 2019 level, after bottoming out at 0.12 million² in 2021.²

Where Hawaii's mainland visitors come from

California sends more visitors to Hawaii than any other state: 2.88 million² in 2024, 39.1%³ of the 7.37 million² US visitors counted by state.² Washington follows with 678,063², then Texas (404,359²) and Oregon (277,928²). The four Pacific Coast states, Alaska included, account for 53.5%³.²

Several inland states grew faster than the coast. US visitors counted by state rose 44.0%³ between 2015 and 2024; California grew 45.1%³, while Arizona, Utah and Nevada grew by 60% or more.² The table ranks the ten biggest home states.

Western and other states over ten years

Grouped by region, the West dominates. Visitors from the Pacific Coast and Mountain states reached 5.00 million² in 2024, 67.8%³ of US visitors counted by state, against 2.37 million² from all other states.² Both groups peaked in 2022, the West at 5.28 million², and both have eased since. Over 2015-2024 the West grew 46.5%³ and the other states 39.0%³.

Which islands they visit

Once in Hawaii, most mainland visitors see Oahu: 3.97 million² of them in 2024, 1.98³ times as many as Maui's 2.00 million².² The Big Island (1.42 million²) and Kauai (1.23 million²) follow, and Lanai and Molokai see only tens of thousands each. A visitor can see more than one island, so the counts add up to more than the number of visitors, and every extra island is usually another inter-island ticket.

Airports, seats and airlines

Airlines flew 13.3 million² seats to Hawaii in 2024, 1.2%³ more than in 2023; 79.8%³ of them were on domestic flights.² Honolulu received 8.49 million² of those seats, 64.0%³ of the total, up 7.1%³ on 2023.² Kahului on Maui lost 12.7%³ of its seats, falling to 2.46 million², and Kona 4.4%³.²

Where the planes come from

Los Angeles is the biggest single source of seats to Hawaii, with 2.31 million² in 2024, 21.8%³ of all mainland seats.² Seattle (1.35 million²) and San Francisco (1.23 million²) follow. Western cities supplied 88.4%³ of domestic seats and eastern cities only 1.19 million².² The fastest-growing big market was Denver, up 23.2%³ in a year, while San Jose lost 32.6%³ of its seats.²

Airlines and direct flights

About 927¹ direct flights a day, 6,484¹ a week, connect 34¹ US cities with Hawaii, and Sunday is the busiest day, with 15%¹ of the week's departures.¹ Alaska Airlines lists the most weekly flights, 1,552¹, ahead of Japan Airlines (960¹) and the commuter carrier Southern Airways Express, which flies as Mokulele (616¹).¹ A flight sold by two partner airlines can appear under both, so these counts rank airlines by listed flights rather than add up to the total.

By departure city, Honolulu itself has the most direct flights to other Hawaiian airports, 1,759¹ a week, most of them inter-island hops.¹ Los Angeles leads the mainland with 805¹ weekly flights, more than Kahului (748¹) and Lihue (504¹) and ahead of Seattle (496¹).¹

Two decades of passenger traffic

Hawaii's airports counted 38.75 million⁶ passengers arriving and departing in 2019, the peak of a series that starts in 1999.⁶ The mix changed a great deal over those two decades. Arrivals on inter-island flights fell from 10.17 million⁶ in 1999 to 7.41 million⁶ in 2019, down 27.2%³, while arrivals from the mainland rose 1.71³-fold to 8.71 million⁶.⁶ Mainland arrivals passed inter-island ones for the first time in 2016.⁶

The pandemic hit every segment, but not equally. In 2021, inter-island arrivals were still 43.5%³ below 2019 and mainland arrivals only 11.6%³ below, while international arrivals were 93.3%³ down.⁶ This official series ends in 2021; the visitor counts above carry the story to 2024.

Taxes and fees on a Hawaii flight

Every ticket to Hawaii carries federal charges that no sale can remove. On a nonstop round trip between the mainland and Hawaii in September 2026, four are set amounts per flight or trip: a flight segment tax of $5.30⁷ per flight, an Alaska/Hawaii departure tax of $11.70⁷ per departure, a Passenger Facility Charge of up to $4.50⁸ per boarding airport, and the September 11 Security Fee of $5.60⁹ per one-way trip.^{7 8 9} With the Passenger Facility Charge at its $4.50⁸ maximum, these fixed charges come to $54.20³ per person, 11.2%³ of the $483¹ average fare.

Hawaii is treated differently from other domestic trips. The 7.5% federal ticket tax applies only to the part of a mainland flight that is in US airspace, not to the stretch over the ocean, and the flight also pays the Alaska/Hawaii departure tax, a reduced form of the international travel tax.⁴ The table lists the charges in force in September 2026.

What this means for your trip

How much is a flight to Hawaii for 4 people? At the $483¹ average, four round trips come to $1,932³, of which $216.80³ is fixed federal charges, before the 7.5% ticket tax.¹ The calendar changes that sum a lot: four tickets at January's $238¹ average cost $952³, four at June's $342¹ cost $1,368³, a $416³ difference for the same trip.

Geography matters as much. The same family pays $1,764³ from Los Angeles and $3,664³ from New York at the route averages.¹ Choosing the island matters less: arrival airports are within $52³ of each other on average, and a second island adds about $160¹ to $176¹ per person for the round trip between islands.¹ The cheapest combination in these averages stacks the patterns: a January or February trip from the West Coast, booked five to six weeks ahead, departing on a Wednesday evening, and flying straight to Lihue or Kona.¹

Conclusions

1. Season sets the floor. June's average ($342¹) is 1.44³ times January's ($238¹), and fall months stay close to the low end.
2. Departure city matters more than the island. New York costs $475³ more than Los Angeles for a round trip to Honolulu, while arrival airports differ by only $52³.
3. Island hopping is cheap and stable. Inter-island round trips average $160¹ to $176¹, a small add-on to a mainland fare.
4. Demand is back near its record. Air visitors reached 9.53 million² in 2024, carried by domestic flights, while international arrivals are at 54.8%³ of 2019.
5. Honolulu is the gateway. It took 64.0%³ of airline seats to Hawaii in 2024, and western cities supply most of them.
6. Real fares have fallen. In 2026 dollars, the average fare from Honolulu is 25.6%³ lower than in 2015, and fixed federal charges add $54.20³ to every nonstop mainland round trip.