There are two possible remedies to a trip in vain: 1) a rebooking to your final destination at another time; or 2) a refund. As a FTer on a run, we will sometimes negotiate getting miles and letting them keep the ticket, but that's just us crazy FTers. I don't think that's an official remedy.

The fact that they lifted your HNL coupons is irrelevant. The record will show that you never got there. You got to SFO and that's it, which is nowhere near a co-terminal or even an alternate for HNL.

Since you have documentation in your file about not getting miles, I would not try any further. It would be too difficult.

I would start by calling reservations and bringing up that record, and ask to be rebooked to HNL due to the "trip in vain" caused by a delay on UA that prevented you from getting there. It's going to take some pushing, but I think you can get rebooked to HNL, and if they don't want to play nice, a refund.

Basically you had a contract to go to HNL, and they didn't do it. They need to make good by rescheduling your trip or giving your money back.

Note that this doesn't happen every day, so it's going to take a good supervisor to work with you and make this happen. Ultimately, if they won't, a call to CR will be in order, and ultimately a formal complaint with the DOT and a dispute with your CC company. We're nowhere near there yet, but there are many avenues to make you whole on this one.

For future reference, I try to avoid the trip in vain thing by working with airport staff in these situations. UA staff are generally ok when you tell them what you're trying to do. "Can you send me to another island instead? What about ANC, I could turn around there. Or maybe New York? I'm just trying to get about 2,500 miles here." That usually does the trick. Dig up your own alternate flight option and feed it back to them, it usually works.