OP, at least from DSM one option is a YUP fare. When booking on AA.com, go to more options and check business class and higher. You can find flights for around 1150 that will book into First Class. For me the extra $400 dollars is well worth it for that long flight from ORD or DFW. Plus with that fare you earn 1.5 Q points and can easily qualify for platinum and snag a lot of extra bonus miles. The wife and I earned over 19000 miles for the OMA-HNL by enrolling in a double challenge with just this route. I looked all last fall for the trip this past summer out of Omaha and never saw the price drop below $700 for a one stop coach flight. Rarely a two stop flight would come up around $650.

Obviously you might not be able to get everyone on the same flight to HNL this way as Im sure YUP are capacity controlled, but worth looking into.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=423044