the way there. Of course we were in first class (Delta One), so any flight from Honolulu to Japan first class is going to feel really nice when you can lay flat and sleep the whole time.

Our flight back out was also on Delta One seats, so that should have been just as nice, but the aircraft had a busted APU, so we sat on the tarmac for 3.5 hours until they could fix it, which caused us to miss our connecting flight in Honolulu to Phoenix. That second flight was on Hawaiian Airlines, booked independently of the Delta flight so nothing they could/would do to provide accommodations, since it was Delta's fault we missed their flight, and the next flight to Phoenix wasn't until 2 days later. So we ended up flying to LAX that first night, and then the following morning take a southwest flight to Phoenix. So we ended up having to pay for the extra southwest flights, and my sister was paying for the whole trip, so it ended up costing her like an extra $1000 for the 5 of us to get home in a reasonable time.

The delta lounges at the Honolulu and Haneda airports were nice, but we only got to use them on our departing airports. When we flew to London a couple of months ago on United Polaris tickets, we got to use the Polaris lounges at both the departing and arriving airports, which was nice. It would have been nice if Delta had let us use the lounge in Honolulu on our return flight since it was their flight that caused us to have to wait in the airport all day until we had the flight to LAX. But they were very firm in their strict rules that the Delta one tickets only allow access to the lounge at the departing airport.