Hawaii vacation news: September 4, 2019

* On September 1st, the USS Arizona Memorial re-opened! It had been closed for more than a year due to dock repairs.

* Southwest Airlines is adding more routes to and within Hawaii, but the new service doesn’t begin until January 2020. Here’s the list of new routes between the US Mainland to Hawaii:

• Sacramento to/from Honolulu
• Oakland to/from Honolulu
• San Jose to/from Lihue
• Oakland to/from Lihue
• San Jose to/from Kona

The new inter-island routes are as follows:

• Honolulu to/from Lihue
• Honolulu to/from Hilo
• Kahului to/from Kona

* Robert Hawaii launched a new lounge service to assist Waikiki visitors with early arrival (before hotel check-in) and for visitors who have a big gap between hotel check-out and their flight.

* Now it’s time for some quirkier news as we approach Autumn and all things pumpkin spice. You may recall that Hawaii loves SPAM. Well, Hawaii News Now reported that a pumpkin spice version of SPAM will be available later in September. We think we’ll give that flavor a pass, but if you try it, let us know what you think.