Thank you for your suggestions Steve M. Two years ago I asked an AA phone rep. about a stopover, I am sure what you suggest is what happened. I asked her straight out if an overnight stopover was still allowed when arriving late into a city (in the past this has been DFW or LAX) where there were no connecting flights to HI until the next day. I will have to be more savvy in the future..........

Our plans involve utilizing AA (with whom we currently have beaucoup FF miles), USAir or SPG points/miles for award tickets from MDT (or AVP) with the ultimate destination either HNL or LIH. I would like to arrange this with a late afternoon routing through PHX because I have a brother who lives there and it would be great to overnight there. I am assuming that AA will not route through PHX on an award trip to HI, and even if they did, the connections to continue on to HI are time consuming, complicated and not worth it. Another option for us would be to fly from MDT (or AVP) to LAX on a late afternoon/evening flight with a next morning connection to HNL or LIH, but I do not know if AA will allow routing from MDT/AVP to LAX on an award ticket? Another scenario for us would be to use AA miles for an award ticket from MDT/AVP to HI and then utilize US Air miles for the return from LIH/HNL to PHX and then purchase a cheap return ticket from PHX to MDT/AVP several days later. We are trying to find a way to make the exhausting trip from the east coast to HI more tolerable without burning up all of our FF miles or $$ and visiting my brother for a few days would be a big plus!

Thanks for telling me about Expert Flyer...........