Standby Stories | The Long Way Home from Hawaii

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What should have been a 6-hour flight home from Hawaii, turned into 24 hours of travel. Standby travel may be ‘free’ but it isn’t usually free of drama. This is how we Fly By the Seat Of Our Pants.

We went to Hawaii for 1 day. Are we crazy? Here’s our reasons {coming soon}

One week before summer break came to an end, I panicked that our travel freedoms were ending. Our family hadn’t gone anywhere in over a month. So, I started looking for quick trips to go on that week.

As I looked at quick flight options and planned a 1-day trip, my husband looked into Hawaii flights. They were wide open for a day trip! Anytime Hawaii is open we feel the pull of the ocean guiding us to throw caution to the wind and take off!

While we were still contemplating Hawaii, I traveled alone with 4 kids to Arkansas on Monday for a day trip. You can read about that whole long, amazingly-messy travel experience here.

The short story is: I had to drive home from Arkansas until midnight the day before we were planning on going to Hawaii.

Driving, you guys… like 5 full hours in a car!  We don’t really do road trips with free flights so this was a major travel day for us.

Despite the late night, we woke up, repacked our bags with swimsuits and sand toys and headed to the Big Island in Hawaii.

Getting to Hawaii in Luxury

On the way to Hawaii, we hit the jackpot with seats in Premium economy which included a meal, extra legroom, screens for all and leg rests. We sat together as a family and relished in the extra comforts. Despite the baby refusing to nap, it was an amazing flight.

We decided with such a short time on the island and no prior planning, we would splurge a little (a lot!!) on the Hilton Resort in Waikoloa. We stayed there before on points and we knew what an incredible resort it was. Plus, there are dolphins, and our daughter begged to see dolphins.

Hawaiian Paradise

We quickly rushed to the resort. After check in we enjoyed the train ride and boat ride around the resort. Finally, we headed to the rocky shore for the gorgeous sunset.

Finally, we were in paradise.

We let the kids stay up way past their Texas bedtime and were rewarded with the sunset that kept on giving. Our view from our balcony was incredible.

We spent the next morning at my favorite beach of all time, Hapuna Beach. Read about all my favorite Hawaiian beaches here.

We dug our toes in the sand, stuck our faces under the water to spy turtles and soaked in the gorgeous sunshine. These are the moments we live for in Hawaii. Five uninterrupted hours on the beach!

When Paradise Turns to Prison

As we left the beach we checked the flight home, just to see. There were 35 seats yesterday when we landed in Hawaii, which is way more than enough to get us home.

Unfortunately, when we checked, ALL the seats were full. So was the next 3 days!

In an instant, what felt like paradise, now felt like a prison sentence. We had obligations to attend back-to-school night, work, and other activities.

How were we going to get home from Hawaii?

What To Do Next?

Typically, resorts will allow you to freshen up in a room on your final day on the island. The Hilton wanted to charge us to do this. Always opting for the cheapest way, we just swam in the pool, and freshened up in the restroom the best we could.

I figured we would be home by morning and could wash hair and clean up better then {wrong}.

We hoped and prayed for the best in getting on the flight anyway. We’ve made full flights before so it could happen.

Unfortunately, after dropping off the rental car, shuttling 4 kids and bags through security, we did not get seats on the direct-to-home flight.

The kids felt tired, sun-soaked and hungry. We tried to decide what to do while the kids attemted to entertain themselves in a small outdoor airport.

HOW could we get home from Hawaii?

Get a hotel room?

Book another car?

Wait 5 hours for the later flights to LA or PHX that also showed no seats?

Flying on the Competition

I don’t know if every parent can understand this, but when you are tired hungry and anxious, it doesn’t matter the cost, you pay it to get back home.

After 3 hours of waiting around the tiny Kona Airport, and wandering through the 2 little shops there, we finally made a decision. After a 1-hour phone call to ID90, we listed on a United flight to LA. We hoped for open seats out of Hawaii.

When we fly standby on other airlines, we fly a low priority and pay a small fee. In this case, it was $50 a person. So our “free” flights to Hawaii for a day just cost our family of six $300.

But it was worth it to get closer to home.

I don’t remember a thing about that short 5 hours flight to LAX, I guess we all passed out in exhaustion.

When we landed, we had to walk 3 terminals to get over to where American Airlines could get us back to Dallas. I don’t know why LAX airport has no train/bus/moving walkway between terminals, but it took 25 minutes to walk with very sleepy (luckily, not complaining) kids.

We finally found our gate, only to find out the flight was delayed.

And delayed.

And delayed.

This gave us enough time to spend a small fortune on fried eggs for our kids to eat for breakfast.

Cancellation Chaos

As I walked back with the eggs, I walked by a flight headed to Houston and casually asked if there were open seats. There were seats. Noted.

When I got back to our gate, our flight to DFW canceled.

For a standby passenger, a canceled flight is disastrous. This means that all the paying customers will now be filling up seats to ALL the other flights leaving LA for the rest of the day. We are, essentially, guaranteed NOT to get on any flight home.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Without any preparation, I told Dave to grab our bags and follow me. I quickly rounded up the kids and ran as fast as I could to the Houston flight. At least Houston was in our home state and surely the flights to DFW would be open {they weren’t}.

The gate agent said we had 1 min to all get on before he closed the door. My husband was struggling with all the bags as I struggled with the kids and baby. As I looked around we were missing a kid! He wandered off to the drinking fountain. I found him just in time to squeeze through the boarding door as it closed.

In all the chaos, we somehow got our crap together enough to get on this flight and slink into our seats (scattered throughout the plane).

Then, and only then, did we wonder if going to Houston was actually what we wanted to do.

So Close, Yet Still so Far From Home

When we landed in Houston, we could finally check the travel website to find out that there were no open seats to Dallas.

Quickly assessing our options we realized we could make it home in time for a meet-the-teacher night at school. But only if we left now. The one-way car rental was $250. But at this point money was a moot point.

Driving… like 5 full hours in a car!

We had a kindergartener, 3rd and 5th grader who were all dying to know who their teacher was, who was in their class. Plus, it was important for MOM to get to meet-the-teacher night to fill out 1000 forms to start the year off right.

Lay off me, I’m STARVING!

We spent the money on the rental car and rushed onto the road for home.

If you are following our day, we have only eaten a fried egg all day after a very short red-eye flight. Everyone was starting to show hunger, but if we stopped we wouldn’t make it home in time.

Chick-fil-a app to the rescue. We ordered food on the road for the closest Chick-fil-a to the freeway. We picked it up and only lost 4 minutes on our drive.

The kids were excited about going to school, so that made our drive enjoyable, despite only 5 hours of sleep.

Back at Back-to-School Night

When we pulled up at the school, we still had sand in our hair, sunburns on our cheeks and snorkel lines on our faces. It was a bit embarrassing to be so disheveled and unprepared.

But we made it.

I don’t think any parent has gone through the Herculean effort and cost to make it to a back-to-school night like we did. But as an educator myself, I know how important it is to be prepared for that first day of school.

It cost $600 and 24 hours to get home from Hawaii, but we made it to our important event so it was all worth it.

The Never-Ending Travel Story

The end of the story is not really the end. We all finally got that shower and slept a full night in a real bed.

But we didn’t sleep in the next morning. I woke the girls up early and repacked their backpacks. They were taking their first unaccompanied flight to visit their cousin.

You’ll never guess where they flew…

Back.

To.

Houston.

And later that evening my husband and I drove BACK TO HOUSTON to meet up with them. In 3 days, we drove between Dallas and Houston 3 times.

This is exactly why I call this blog Fly By the Seat of Our Pants.

Would I Do it Again?

In the moment, I felt stressed, hungry, anxious and worried about the cost. But months later it is a drop in the bucket. It’s a funny story and a great memory.

I’m not sure our few hours on the beach justified the cost or travel time, but we will always have those memories as a family racing to get to back to school.

If I knew ahead of time what it would take to get home from Hawaii, I don’t think I would’ve chosen to do it. But that’s the fun of flying standby and never knowing what the future holds!

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