That is my opening question with tourists, in my cab. Over the years I have logged this info on a world map, with pins on corkboard, above my desk.

That is one of the benefits of driving cab on Mau’i. We are definately an international vacation destination.

It is fun listening to my fares speak in their native language or all the world variations of english.

Here are some more breakouts of where my visitors have come from:
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I haven’t made a new post since August 1. I went on vacation last Monday, August 7. For me that usually means a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii to visit my family and spend some downtime in the peace and quiet of Honokaa. I settled into a very low key routine, free of work, website maintenances and blog postings.

I’ll touch on flying interisland with this return entry.

Interisland flying on Hawaiian Air: My airline of choice to fly between the islands for many years has and still is Hawaiian Airlines. Why? Because I always liked their planes better than the competition. For a long time Hawaiian flew versions of the venerable McDonnell-Douglas DC9. After retiring their entire DC-9 fleet in 2002-03, they adopted the Boeing 717, which is essentially a modernized version of the same jet. Hawaiian began to phase in those planes around 2001 and to date have 11 of them for use on interisland routes. I always like flying on these planes because they have 2 – 3 seating. And since I usually fly solo, I mostly sit on the side where there is only 2 seats.

I also like Hawaiian because they now have assigned seating on interisland flights. This is really convenient as passengers no longer have to scramble for open seats like how it was in the past and how it still is on Aloha Airlines.
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The big news for the traveling public in Hawaii is Go!, a new interisland air carrier that started flying paying passengers on June 9 with their fleet of 3 CRJ 200 50 passenger mini-jets. Go! is owned and operated by Mesa Airlines which does business on the mainland under a number of monickers for other airlines.

Go! made their announcement with a big splash in March when they unveiled a $39 one-way fare for travel to any island on their schedule. Both Hawaiian and Aloha Airlines quickly matched the $39 fare with Island Air not too far behind into the fray.

Days before Go!’s launch, they again upped the ante in the “fare war” when they introduced a $19 promotional fare, which was quickly matched by Hawaiian Airlines only. A day before Go! started flying paying passengers, and after they had supposedly sold all their $19 seats, Aloha Airlines dropped “da bomb” by giving away 1,000 free ticket vouchers to customers who waited in line at Honolulu, Lihue, Kahului, Kona and Hilo airports on the morning of Go!’s launch.

Needless to say Aloha Airlines won the P-R battle that morning as the local TV newscasts gave live coverage to all of the people standing in line at Honolulu International Airport eclipsing Go!’s debut.

You gotta love capitalism. Hawaii residents haven’t seen this kind of interisland fare pricing in years. Surely it will be tough for all of the interisland airlines to maintain the low fares while trying to pay the bills and stay profitable. Seriously, Go! is probably here to kill off one of their competitors. Time will tell what will happen.

In the meantime the public and myself gets to enjoy the ride!

Links to Hawaii’s interisland airlines:

• Hawaiian Airlines
• Aloha Airlines
• Island Air
• Go!
• Pacific Wings

Graphic above: Go!’s website advertising their current low fare.

Street maps such as this one were part of the display at the Honolulu Transit public meeting Tuesday night.

On Tuesday night the City and County of Honolulu held a public meeting at the Blaisdell Center Plumeria Room to pitch its proposal for a possible mass transit �solution.� Hundreds of people came, expecting to hear some speeches by the supporters and maybe opponents of the transit project.

This was not a meeting where anyone spoke. What we got was an informal gathering of public officials, transportation project planners, the transit planning contractor and the general public, all in one room to look at displays of the various proposals to Honolulu�s traffic problems. The public also got to have their �say� by filling out comment forms which were collected by officials running the show.

This public meeting was set up just to satisfy the federal requirement to present the public with a number of transit options even though we all know that the City and County�s leaders want a fixed rail of some sort.
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