The Hawaii Department of Transportation launched two free mobile apps this week, one for Honolulu Airport and one for Lihue Airport, aimed at reducing confusion and saving time. We tried them, and aside from a basic blue-dot navigation feature, there wasn’t as much new as we had hoped. The apps may not go far in solving the deeper problems travelers face at Hawaii’s airports.
Honolulu Airport has long been a maze of long walks, confusing signage, and unexpected bottlenecks that we’ve written about many times. The Lihue airport is petite and much easier to navigate, with only one terminal and a limited number of gates and amenities. According to the press release, the next airport to get its app will be Maui.
How the new Hawaii airport apps work.
The HNL Airport and LIH Airport apps utilize indoor blue-dot navigation, similar to what is found in mapping programs. Once inside the airport, your position is displayed on a terminal map, along with step-by-step guidance to check-in counters, gates, baggage claim areas, restrooms, food and shopping options, agricultural inspection stations, and ground transportation options.
HNL’s app also includes live parking availability, updated every ten minutes. Travelers can view the open spaces in each parking structure before entering. This system is tied to LED counters installed in 2022; however, that information was previously only visible at the lot entrances. If the LIH app also had parking availability, that would be a good reason for us to use it regularly.
Is there anything new here?
We’ve already spent time on the Hawaii DOT Airports website, and there’s nothing novel to a significant degree, other than the blue dot navigation, which we found not particularly useful, but maybe it will be for some people. If you further scrutinize the Hawaii Airports website, you’ll find the same thing we did: that pretty much everything was already there, working well overall…