Letters for Dec. 9, 2015

Letters for Dec. 9, 2015

Joe wrong on Pearl Harbor facts

The poor old Fox network can’t even get their sports history right. Over the weekend during an NFL game and celebration at Pearl Harbor their sportscaster, Joe Buck, mentioned there was an NFL game in progress at the time Pearl Harbor was attacked. He said the PA announcer asked for all military personnel to report to their commands and also government officials were paged. He also said it was not announced over the radio even though the spectators had transistor radios.

Poor Joe got his facts a little muddled. The transistor was not even invented until 1947 and pagers were not invented until 1949. Also the Pearl Harbor attack was broadcast as that is how my family found out about it. I remember it vividly and I was about five years old at the time, living in Missouri, and playing ball in the neighbor’s yard when my folks came and got me and told me about the attack.

John Gordon

Princeville

Interisland airfares hurting Kauai

Aloha Airlines, oh how I miss you!

As a former Kauai resident, now working in Maui as guide and travel writer, I find it very alarming that interisland flights to Lihue have become monopolized raising prices to ridiculous heights. Over the last two years I have done my best to feature as many local tour operators, restaurants, and attractions on Kauai as possible for online travel websites.

In these two years, flights went from as low as $59 to the current rate of $250-$315 per one-way ticket.

I can actually fly to San Francisco for less then that one-way from OGG. That being a six-hour flight, and OGG to LIH being 45 minutes, it is obvious that the airline monopoly to Kauai has created a pricing juggernaut squeezing the most dollars out of our

island visitors, while throwing the rest of interisland working class under the bus. Shame on Hawaiian Air, and even more so the state

departments responsible for regulating air fares for letting this happen.

In a state with no connecting roads between counties, this causes many people to be island locked by the lack of affordable transportation options.

My own personal ability to bring better accessibility in print to Kauai businesses has been halted, and with that thousands of supportive funds to those businesses.

So one business, an airline, is allowed to undercut the ability of many businesses to thrive. This could truly be disastrous to local economy if it continues unregulated. I hope things change before more is lost.

Jay Franey

Makawao