I realize I'm not
@frank808 but we lived in FL prior to moving here and traveled to HI 2-3 times a year. We've flown AA, United, and Delta (when an issue occurred with our United outbound flight). I'll answer this in reverse. For the flights back, I prefer the evening flights from HNL to IAH/DFW to FL. It gives you nearly the full day in Hawaii. I also prefer it since I'm able to sleep on planes. For return flights we've only flown AA and United.
For flights from FL to HI, DW preferred to break it into several segments. Depending on the airline we'd go to IAH/DFW to LAX/SFO/SAN to HNL. There are some flights from Phoenix, but we haven't taken. While DW prefers breaking the flights into many segments, I'm fine non-stop flights from IAH/DFW to HNL. I think in the end I like FL-TX-CA-HI (pick your airline and route) to go and HI-TX-FL for the return. Although one good thing about the direct flights from Texas is that you arrive early afternoon. We've only flown Delta once. We were supposed to go direct from Atlanta to Honolulu, but the latrines stopped working and we had to divert to LAX. Chaos then ensued. We were supposed to arrive at 4PM, ended up arriving at 10PM.
On a slightly related note. If you're like us and wake up very early on the first day (we'd usually wake up between 3-4), make a pot of coffee or your favorite morning drink, hop in a car, and drive to the windward side to watch the sunrise. Then stop at Cinnamon's in Kailua and have a great breakfast.