Doing LAX-PPT through *A is doable, just that you will need to plan for a trip after April and have only two says out of the week to do it with a possible overnight/long layeover in SYD or AKL. Meaning your travel time each way could be anywhere between 28 and 45 hrs. I have priced out a LAX-SYD-AKL-PPT departing on a late-evening Wednesday, arriving on a Friday very early morning, for 35K miles and $6 (total travel time, 29hrs). Yeah is looks like two days later but you cross the the international dateline twice I believe by doing this, once on the way to SYD and once from AKL to PPT. Had to look for availability segment by segment and then pieced it together with a multi-destination search. I have done one in reverse and it is one travel day but almost the same travel time (around 30hrs) and taxes were higher at around $56. But I agree with above poster that anything not direct LAX-PPT is crazy.