Saving Maui

I am hoping for your support to save a prime tourist vacation area, northwest Maui from Lahaina and Kaanapali through beautiful Napili Bay and Kapalua. Hawaiian Airlines is proposing a 50-acre airport above Mahinahina, a community of residents and beach resorts halfway between Kaanapali and Kapalua. This is to replace the charming Hawaiian-style Royal Hawaiian three-acre airstrip at Kaanapali, where Amfac plans on building a beach resort. RH carries 125,000 passengers a year on 8-10-passenger planes.

Hawaiian Airlines proposes 50-passenger, four-propeller Dash-7s starting with 250,000, going to 750,000 within three years, landing over the shoreline at the present RH airstrip and exiting over the beach at Napili Bay-Honokeana Cove resort area, a prime area of low-key resorts and million-dollar homes on bays.

That is bad enough. Now, per the Maui News on May 5, we finally learn that other inter-island airlines will be coming in. When contacted, they confirmed this, adding that if this proposal goes through they will immediately purchase aircraft and bring over half of their 4 million yearly passenger load now using Kahului Airport.

This is permanent and will be devastating to our quality of living, environmental beauty and mainstay economy, tourism. The latter should be of particular interest to your readers, many of them regulars here.

ANNE M. OAKS

Lahaina, Maui