When I did Hawaii last month, I went JFK-LAX then on to HNL, same in reverse. First class ticket, which got me business on the cross country flight, but since it was Flagship service, it was actually much nicer than the LAX-HNL leg.

Coming home, I got the 2:30 HNL to LAX flight (which as luck would have it, turned out to be a 3-class 763, with only 3 rows in first, completely flat recline, etc), and then connected to an overnight redeye Flagship flight to JFK. Worked out very nice. Since I was finishing a cruise, the afternoon HNL departure was perfect timing.