Alaska Air Group has confirmed a full cabin overhaul for Hawaiian Airlines' 24 Airbus A330-200s, a fleet averaging around 13 years old. The refresh kicks off in 2028 and touches every cabin, marking the biggest product change since Alaska took over Hawaiian.
The headline change is at the front. The current 2-2-2 flat seats — long past their prime, with no built-in entertainment — will be replaced by 22 Leihōkū Suites across six rows in a 1-2-1 layout. Every passenger gets direct aisle access, a privacy door, a 19-inch 4K screen, bluetooth audio, and USB-C and AC power. The seats appear to be Collins Aerospace's Elevation design, an evolution of the widely used Super Diamond. Hawaiian's current forward cabin has just 18 seats, so capacity up front grows by four.
Behind them comes something entirely new: a premium economy cabin branded Premium Reserve, with 28 seats in a 2-3-2 configuration across four rows. The rest of the plane gets new economy seats, fresh carpets and lighting, plus HD seatback monitors and bluetooth throughout — a real upgrade on a fleet that previously relied on Starlink Wi-Fi alone for entertainment.
All of this pushes the premium share of the cabin from roughly 30% to about 40%, in line with the industry-wide push to sell more high-yield seats. It should also make Hawaiian genuinely competitive on international routes to Asia and the South Pacific, where its old pairs-of-seats business class was badly outgunned. For mainland-Hawaii flights it matters less, though holidaymakers flying in pairs may actually miss the old couple-friendly seating.
The open question is what happens to the fleet long term. Alaska has already moved Hawaiian's 787s to Seattle under its own branding and has cut several of Hawaiian's long-haul routes, even ones where Honolulu's geography favoured them. The A330s will keep flying with Hawaiian branding for now, but with Alaska building a Pacific hub in Seattle, Honolulu's role could shrink to the southern Pacific. Travellers shouldn't read too much into the strategy yet — but the cabins themselves are locked in and look solid.
For anyone booking Hawaii flights from 2028 onwards, this is good news: expect a modern lie-flat suite with a door on routes to Honolulu, and a genuinely separate premium economy option that didn't exist before. Just note the timeline — nothing changes until work begins in 2028, so current cabins are what you'll get for a while yet.
