Why The Long Way Around?

As mentioned below, we're scheduled to fly from Seattle to Denver to Honolulu tomorrow in First Class on UA, earning 4380 qualifying miles plus our 100% bonus to get there. From there we face two five-hour flights in Hawaiian Airlines, sitting in the back of the bus. The return flight is a red-eye - don't worry, we expect no sympathy.

The only way possible to keep our flying eggs in one basket via Star Alliance (as we generally try to do) would have required going through New Zealand, and not even we are quite that fanatical. More important, we'll have flown nearly 80,000 qualifying miles on UA so far in 2010 and we won't really "need" the miles from the HNL-PPT leg or its equivalent to requalify for our 1K status on UA.

For those of us who are "Up In The Air" types, the question answers itself.