I just booked two saver awards to Maui for the inlaws. Outbound availability is plentiful in April, the return just the reverse. I ended up checking the return from HNL and got lucky. I got OMA-DEN-LAX-OGG and HNL-ORD-OMA. I assumed I would get OGG-HNL on Aloha making this a Star Alliance award.

No dice! The agent mumbled something about too many hops and claimed I needed to shell out an additional 10,000 for 2 one-way tix. At the time, I was just happy to actually get them to and from the islands on savers and didn't want to argue.

Should the OGG-HNL be included or not?