Originally Posted by
RealHJ
Somehow I wouldn't like to fly HND-DTW-HNL or HND-DTW-LAX or HND-DTW-SFO or HND-DTW-SLC or (...). Sorry.. but that just makes no sense whatsoever. DTW is so far east that it cuts out connections to the majority of US from HND by making one backtrack back west again a lot, and adding unnecessary flying time + burning extra fuel.
Why the obsession with East-West? You are proposing going South, just to go North again.
Flying via DTW is comparable or better, in terms of distance to (roughly) anywhere east of DFW. This means that it is a shorter route for maybe 65% or so of the population. And the timing of the DTW flight allows for far more same day, single-stop connections to more cities than HNL does. And, importantly, from DL's perspective, more flights on their own metal.
And the timing of the HNL flight offers pretty bad connection possibilities. Looking at all carriers, a noon arrival (which is as early as any carrier will be able to do) means that you can make a reasonable same-day connection to LAX, PHX, LAS, PDX, SFO, and SEA. All of those flights arrive too late to allow for significant numbers of onward connections, save maybe a few red-eyes.
In other words, connecting via HNL would offer an advantage over DTW for less than maybe 10 cities (I might have missed some post-1:30p HNL-West Coast departures). Of those, all but PHX and LAS have non-stop service to NRT. I don't care how far from Tokyo NRT is, how much demand is there to fly 1k miles out of one's way and add in a 2-hour connection simply to fly HND-LAX, rather than NRT-LAX?