We are older travelers. Fly business from NYC to Europe and beyond, but almost always use points. My points are on Amex or BA. Planning to go to Hawaii. Paying for business just too much money! So...should we fly to LAX or SFO, stay over (one or more nights) to break up the flight and then take the next leg with extra room seats.. Should we one way bite the bullet and fly thru with "extra room" seats? If we fly back from Hawaii and stay overnight at an airport hotel and take a morning (but not the first flight) can our luggage go thru without our getting it for the overnight. Suggestions wanted. United has nonstops...how good??

First, you can fly non-stop from NYC to HNL in about 12 hours. The best connecting flight via either SFO or LAX is around 13 1/2 hours and could be as much as 24 hours. Regardless, if you don't fly non-stop it doesn't make much of a difference if you connect through LAX or SFO as the flight times from either of those cities to Hawaii is essentially the same.

Personally (and i fall into the older traveler category) my first choice would be the non-stop flight. My second choice would be one of the one stop flight if the elapsed travel time was in the 13 to 14 hour range. If there were longer connecting times I'd overnight in either LAX or SFO. Which option you choose is really a personal decision.

If you stay overnight in SFO or LAX while on route either to or from Hawaii you have to claim your luggage when you arrive in the stopover city and re-check it the following day. Airlines WILL NOT hold your luggage "overnight".

Which island are you going to?

It's kind of hard to say if you should go nonstop or change planes. Only you know how long you can stand sitting in a coach seat. Last time I went to Hawaii, I flew coach to Honolulu from Chicago with an hour or two layover in L.A. rather than go nonstop and I was glad I did. I'm tall, and an eight, nine-hour flight would have been difficult.

I wouldn't want to stop on the west coast for a few days. I'd want to go straight thru to Hawaii in the shortest time frame possible. I'm OK with flying coach because that's all I can ever afford.

When are you going and how flexible are your dates?

Through the end of this month, American Airlines is having a sale on purchased frequent flyer miles, with the price coming in at around 2c per mile. AA requires 30,000 miles from the continental US to Hawaii each way in first class, so 120,000 miles for two round trips. You can buy 120,000 miles for around $2400, then turn right around and redeem them for (2) first class tickets. You can use AA miles on American, US Airways, Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines.

Most of the coach tickets I'm seeing (again, don't know <i>when</i> you're going, important for Hawaii) are running $800-$900 round trip, with first/business class running $1800 - $2200, so $1200 per ticket would be a decent bargain.

What you'd want to do is look for mileage seats on aa.com before buying the miles, then when you find something that works, go ahead and buy the miles pronto. They usually appear in your account (you'd need one or two AA accounts) right away, so the whole booking process can be done quite quickly, i.e. before the open seats vanish.

The key of course is to fly on dates when there are FF seats available, which with Hawaii can be a crapshoot.

Note that flying on miles you won't be able to stop over on the west coast, but if you're in business/first class, it's tolerable.

One other note is that the westbound flight is going to be considerably longer than the eastbound one, owing to prevailing winds.

Gardyloo...great info. Will follow thru. Calling AA to see if we can do the nonstop return and stopover one way and how all this will work.
many thanks!!