Unless things have recently changed, AA allows free date changes for awards if you maintain the same routing. A very friendly policy. If you change the routing (go from HNL-PPT to LAX-PPT for example), I believe it will be a $150 fee per award.
It does seem to be a shame to use AA miles to book HNL-PPT, when the award for JFK-PPT or even JFK-SYD would be the same amount of miles (USA-Pacific award).