Originally Posted by Darren
The // is an open jaw. These are the ONLY ONLY ONLY combinations you can take and use Honolulu, again assuming that you are not interested in visiting other islands. So yes, you can open jaw but it would make absolutely no sense to me for you to do so. So in that regard I stand corrected.
The three rules implicated are 1) no open jaws across the pacific ocean, 2) only one flight to or from Hawaii is permitted, and 3) no backtracking between Hawaii and the mainland. The third is what very explicitly prohibits you from open jawing back to the mainland after getting to Hawaii from the US.
One possible justification/use for an open-jaw involving HNL would be to include one of the many cruises to the mainland in your itinerary (and they're very nice, too - personal experience.) I presume the fact that you
can do an open-jaw ex/to Hawaii means the transoceanic surface segment ban only refers to the whole ocean, not just part.
It raises an interesting matter: due to US cabotage law, the one-way cruises leaving Hawaii all go to Ensenada, Mexico. Mexico is not mentioned in the "no-backtrack" rule. One could relatively easily get from Ensenada or nearby Tijuana to MEX, then hook up with LA for playing around in S. America. If you then traveled on to AKL or SYD from SCL, you'd never set down back in the US after leaving Hawaii, so you wouldn't have violated the explicit backtrack rule. This might be a way for westbound xONEx itineraries that include South America to visit Hawaii
before going on to S. America; e.g., xxx-LAX-HNL//MEX-SCL-etc-SYD. Otherwise they'd need to do S. America first so that exiting HNL would be the last stop in the zone. More flexibility results. Hmmm.