Virgin America to Hawaii & Wi-Fi Calling on Sprint iPhones!

by Palo · April 9, 2015

This week there has been 2 new game changing services announced from both Virgin America and Sprint that caught my attention!

Virgin America announced service from SFO to HNL (Honolulu, Hawaii) starting November 2nd and from SFO to OGG (Maui, Hawaii) starting December 3rd. They will offer one flight per day. This has taken them 8 years since the airline started but they finally have an A320 with ETOPS certification allowing them to fly over water for long periods of time. I can’t wait for the inaguaral flights! This will change the way I fly to Hawaii in the future. Great competition for Hawaiian Airlines on these routes. The press release can be found here.

Virgin America to Hawaii!

Sprint announced the availability of Wi-Fi calling for iOS with the release of iOS 8.3 which Apple released yesterday. This allows you to make and receive calls anywhere you have a WiFi connection just as you would when you have Sprint service. This will allow me to no longer have to rely on Skype while making calls while traveling internationally. I’ve tested the functionality and I’m very surprised at the very high level of audio quality delivery with the Wi-Fi calls. There are a few countries where they prevent WiFi calling but I’m sure a VPN connection can circumvent this limitation. I can’t wait to try it out on my next international trip although I do like to disconnect from my phone while on vacation. More details can be found here.