In a week, I’m flying United from Newark to Honolulu with a connection on Hawaiian Air to Hilo. Originally I had a 90 minute connection. With United schedule changes, I now have 59 minute connection. Is this ok? I’ve never flown through Honolulu airport. Thanks.
As long as your bags are checked through to your final destination, you will be fine. You have to take a shuttle (The Wiki Wiki Shuttle) from the international terminal to the interisland terminal, but it should only take you about 15 minutes.
It seems like its still a legal connection or else United wouldn’t have been able to re-ticket. The airlines have a responsibility to get you to your final destination so if you were to miss the flight due to a delayed United flight they will put you on the next Hilo flight out.
If your United flight is on time you should have no problems making the connection.
Not a big airport
The only problem could be shuttle delays because of traffic changes due to all of the construction but should be okay if your United flight is on time.
I made it to the Big island and now enjoying the sound of the surf at Mauna Kea beach. I was nervous enough about the connection to switch the Hilo flight to an hour later. I’ve discovered in my travels that a legal connection doesn’t always work.
The inbound flight was 10 minutes early. We did a leisurely walk from the main terminal to the inter island terminal (United is at far end of the main terminal). When we got to the gate, my original flight was already boarding and actually closed the door 5 minutes early. So, we could have made the flight, but 40 minutes later we were on the next flight. And our bags were the first ones off the belt in Hilo. If the inbound flight to HNL was 15-20 minutes late, it would have been questionable on the connection. In looking at the on time arrival history of the United flight, it was late 20 minutes or more for half of the last 30 days.
PS: of the 3 days we were at volcano house, we had one day without rain or low clouds. That allowed us to see the lava lake, the one bubbling lava hotspot, and the lava glow of the Kīlauea crater at night. The Kona side is definitely the drier side.