As a DL FF, I can echo what Ripper says. DL awards are not only hard to get, but showing signs of getting even harder and costlier in terms of miles. Check out the DL forum for a lot of grousing about this. I still hope this partnership comes to fruition because I would love to get HA miles for those DL flights for which I can't seem to find viable alternatives for business travel.

Other than the pending (?) arrangement with DL , what other redemption options does HA offer for the Central and Eastern US mainland? It won't do me as much good if I can only get HA awards as far as their own destinations since over half of my travel is beyond the Western US. Unlike most Hawaii residents, I have no interest whatsoever in going to Vegas, which seems to be the most value for your FF miles on HA. It would make me sooooo happy if HA would use some of their new airbusses to go places like DFW, EWR, ATL, IAD, etc, but breaking into legacy fortress hubs might be hard.