My Experience with COVID Testing for Hawaii Travel

As of October 15th, you are now able to fly to Hawaii and not required to quarantine for 14 days if you test negative prior to arriving to Hawaii. You must take the test no earlier than 72 hours before your flight departure time which can prove to be difficult if results take more than 48 hours to be received. Luckily, Hawaiian Airlines has partnered with Worksite Labs which has a location near SFO with test results guaranteed within 36 hours. Las Vegas and Los Angeles also have Worksite Labs testing locations. You must be a Hawaiian Airlines guest to use these testing locations. The cost is $90 out of pocket, but the guarantee is worth the expense in my opinion.

I booked an appointment online about 1 week prior to my flight in early November. The location near SFO is 261 Loomis St, San Francisco, CA 94124 which is a dirt lot. Upon arrival, you show your ID through your car window and proceed to a spot where they hand you a testing kit. It’s a self administered sample with supervision. A quick 15 seconds later I was done. Very easy! Now to wait for the results. I tested around 10AM on a Tuesday and was notified of the results at 7PM on Wednesday which was 33 hours later. The notification was via a text message with a link to their portal. I clicked on the link and tried to login. Unfortunately, their portal crashed. They must release all the results at once and with everyone anxiously awaiting their results it crashed their servers 🙁 It was about 30 minutes later they restored their servers and I was able to obtain my results. I tested negative and I was ready for my flight to Hawaii on Thursday morning. There was one more important step you must do within 24 hours of departure. You must register for a Safe Travels account and upload your test results to the State of Hawaii. They also capture your flight and lodging details for contact tracing purposes. You will receive a QR code which you will be required to present upon arrival in Hawaii.

After a wonderful flight on Hawaiian Airlines in First Class, I was on Oahu! All arriving passengers are funneled into an area where a local representative verifies all your paperwork and testing results. Local and military police monitored the area to ensure nobody bypasses the process. Hawaii is very serious with the measures they have put in place.

After a quick check, I was free to explore Oahu without a 14 day quarantine!

Note, the rules keep changing. Please check the site for any updates: https://hawaiicovid19.com/travel/getting-to-hawaii/

Effective November 24, 2020, the negative test result must be uploaded onto the SafeTravels Hawai‘i account prior to departure or printed out prior to departure and hard copy in hand when arriving in Hawai‘i. Failure to do either will result in a 14-day quarantine upon arrival in Hawai‘i.

Enjoy the islands! 🙂

Ka’ena Point State Park