Rapid Travel Chai

Hawaiian Airlines’ HawaiianMiles Share Miles program is a generous, flexible benefit for their credit cardholders:

The fastest way to pool and share HawaiianMiles is with a Hawaiian Airlines credit card or Bankoh Hawaiian Airlines Visa® check card. Any HawaiianMiles member can give miles to a Hawaiian Airlines credit cardholder — free of charge*.

• No Transaction Fees for Mileage Transfers
• No Charges Per Mile
• No Minimum or Maximum Number of Miles Transferred
• Hawaiian Airlines Visa Cardholders May Receive 10 Transactions in a Calendar Year.

Previously business cards were excluded, however the new business card, branded as Bank of Hawaii and issued by Barclaycard, is included:

* ShareMiles is available for the Hawaiian Airlines Visa® credit, Hawaiian Airlines® World Elite MasterCard®, and Hawaiian Airlines® Business MasterCard® cardholders. Cardholders with the Hawaiian Airlines corporate/business check card is not eligible.

This can be useful for individuals as well as families because previously business cards were issued with their own HawaiianMiles number as business accounts that could not be merged with individual accounts. I have not yet seen reports if this practice continues with the new business card, however the extension of the Share Miles benefit makes this easy to resolve.

I have the old Bank of America-issued business card, well, I canceled it two weeks ago, and I tested online from my business account. I got an error that Share Miles only applies to individual accounts. I did not think to test my individual account as I had canceled my personal cards last summer.

I called HawaiianMiles to see if the new Share Miles benefit would apply to the old BOA-issued cards. Unfortunately, no, the agent said. But, to my surprise, he said it is possible to Share Miles from individual to business. He agreed to move my entire personal balance to my business account, over the phone, “as a courtesy.” He did not ask to verify if I currently hold any of the cards. The website appears to have the functionality open to me, so it is possible that once you have a credit card they do not then deactivate the feature when you cancel the cards. If I had any miles left in my individual account I would test it out, but happily all my miles are now combined and I have one less account balance to deal with.

Note the mention of the Bankoh Hawaiian Airlines Visa® check card. It is a product of limited appeal. $2 = 1 HawaiianMile, capped at 2,500 HawaiianMiles per month. There is no waiver for the $3 monthly fee.

For reference, here are the links, (updated with all 3 current cards as of August 1, 2014):

• Hawaiian Airlines^® World Elite MasterCard^®
• Hawaiian Airlines^® Bank of Hawaii World Elite MasterCard^®
• Hawaiian Airlines^® Bank of Hawaii Business MasterCard^®

Disclaimer: I receive compensation for the Barclaycard-branded cards but not the Bank of Hawaii-branded cards. I have never flown Hawaiian Airlines or figured out what to do with my current stash of HawaiianMiles. I have been to Hawaii once for two days, visiting Pearl Harbor and Punch Bowl while my wife was stuck in client meetings.