Alaska Hawaiian

Review by eFreeware

If you fly Alaska or Hawaiian Airlines more than once or twice a year, this app is the one piece of travel software worth keeping on your phone. It is built by the airline itself, so it covers the parts of a trip that matter most: searching and booking, checking in, getting through the airport and keeping an eye on the flight itself. Nothing here is trying to sell you a generic travel experience. It is a tool for people who already have a reason to fly with these two carriers.

The appeal is that most of the trip lives in one place. You book, you check in, your boarding pass is there, and when plans shift you can make changes without standing in a line. The developer describes it as a flying companion, and that framing is fair: it is less about inspiration and more about the mechanics of getting from one airport to another with as few snags as possible.

It is free, it carries no advertising, and there are no in-app purchases. That matters for an app tied to an airline, because it means the experience is not interrupted by promotions for things you did not ask about. What you get is the airline's own service window, and the trade-off is that everything inside it is tied to Alaska and Hawaiian flights.

Who gets the most from it

The clearest fit is the frequent flyer. If you are working toward status or watching points accumulate, the Atmos Rewards section shows your activity and how close you are to the next tier. Being able to check that while you are deciding whether to book with cash or with points makes the app more useful than a simple booking screen, because the two decisions are connected.

It also suits anyone who travels with family or colleagues and ends up coordinating. You can share boarding passes and flight details with other people, and you can follow flights taken by friends and family. That covers the common situation where you are not the one flying but you still want to know whether the plane left on time.

Travelers who book on a whim and change their minds will get value from the flexibility tools. The developer notes that you can move to an earlier or later flight starting 24 hours before departure, and that canceling or changing a trip is done by tapping the three dots on the trip list. Neither of those is a dramatic feature, but together they remove the phone call that used to be part of a schedule change.

Where the app is narrower is in scope. It is an airline's own app, so its usefulness begins and ends with flights on those two brands. If your travel is spread across several carriers, this will be one of a few apps you open rather than the only one.

Booking, points and payment

Flight search and booking are the foundation. You can compare options and complete a trip using money or Atmos Rewards points, which means the same screen serves both the traveler paying cash and the one spending a balance. I like that the points side is treated as a first-class way to pay rather than a footnote, since that is how many regular flyers actually book.

Payment is handled in part through Apple Pay, which the app supports for flights and for seat upgrades. For anyone who already keeps a card in their phone wallet, that removes a step at the exact moment you are trying to finish a booking quickly. The developer also mentions that paying for a checked bag through the app comes with a discount, a small concrete saving that adds up over a year of travel.

Your Atmos Rewards number and TSA PreCheck number can be stored with the trip, so they do not have to be dug out of an email at the airport. Points activity and status progress are tracked in the rewards view. None of this is unusual for an airline app, but it is the core of why someone would keep it installed between trips rather than deleting it after each one.

Getting through the airport

Check-in and boarding passes are where an airline app earns its space on a home screen. You can check in and reach your boarding pass quickly, and the pass can be added to Google Wallet alongside your Atmos Rewards and lounge card. Keeping those three together is a small convenience that pays off at the gate, the lounge door and the checkout counter in one motion.

Meal pre-ordering is available in Main Cabin, Premium Class and First Class, which is useful on longer routes where the choice you want may not survive to your row. Wait lists for First Class and standby are visible in the app as well, so you can see where you stand without asking at the counter.

Real-time flight and travel updates are pushed to your phone, and you can track flights taken by friends and family. That combination covers both your own trip and the arrivals board you would otherwise be refreshing. The app also lets you add flight details to your iPhone's calendar, which is a quiet feature that keeps a trip visible next to everything else in your week.

What it costs

The app is free to download. There are no ads in it and no in-app purchases, so there is no upsell layer sitting between you and a boarding pass. That is worth stating plainly, because plenty of travel apps make their money somewhere in the middle of the journey.

The costs that do exist belong to the airline, not the app: fares, seat upgrades, checked bags and the like. The app itself is not a subscription and does not gate features behind a purchase.

Alternatives and how it compares

The obvious comparison is a general flight search service. Those are better at surveying many carriers at once and at spotting a cheaper routing on an airline you rarely use. This app does not try to do that. It is a single-airline tool, and its strength is depth on those flights rather than breadth across the market.

A second comparison is a third-party trip organizer, the kind that stores reservations from several sources in one itinerary. Those can be handy for a complicated multi-airline trip. The trade is convenience across brands against real capability within one.

A third is simply the airline's website in a mobile browser. That works, and it avoids installing anything. What the app adds is quick access to changes on the day of travel. If you fly these airlines regularly, the app is the more comfortable of the two.

A dependable app for regular Alaska and Hawaiian flyers

This is a well-established app with a large audience: more than 5 million installs and a 4.1 average across 91,373 ratings. It has been available since November 2011 and was updated in October 2026, with the recent release adding general fixes and the option to give the app an Alaska Airlines or Hawaiian Airlines appearance from the Brand experience entry in the More menu.

The case for installing it is straightforward. If Alaska or Hawaiian is your usual airline, this app removes most of the friction around a trip: booking with cash or points, checking in, carrying a boarding pass in Google Wallet, pre-ordering a meal, watching a wait list and changing your flight when plans move. It does all of that without ads or purchases getting in the way.

If you fly these carriers only occasionally and book whatever is cheapest across the market, a general search service will serve you better for planning, and the app will be something you open mainly on the day of the flight. For everyone else, it is the sensible default on the phone.

What's new in version 8.21.0

General bug fixes and performance improvements. You can personalize your experience by choosing an Alaska Airlines or Hawaiian Airlines look and feel. You can do this by selecting Brand experience in the More menu. Thanks for flying with us, and thanks for your help finding bugs. Please keep sending us feedback—we're always listening.