Kahului Airport
In a recent article reported in the Maui News, a hearing regarding the three options to correct the safety flaws of Kahului Airport runway were presented on January 23. Two of the options required closure of the runway to direct mainland flights for three to 10 weeks or more, eliminating a large percentage of Maui’s visitors. Option three required no interruption in direct mainland flights.
The audience represented every contributing member of the Maui community, from owners to employees to unions and included Mayor Alan Arakawa who stated, “such a closure would be devastating.”
In the presentation and in testimony, it became immediately apparent that turning off and on mainland flights would have an impact on Maui’s economy for years. Once the decision would be made to close the Kahului Airport to mainland flights, the airlines would need two years to schedule it and unknown years to ramp it back up. A far greater impact than the $35 million lost for three to 10 weeks projected for closure. Fifty years of marketing and billions spent to get Maui to where it is now would be wasted.
Following is a brief summary of the options considered:
Option 1: The cheapest solution, but one requiring a 10-week suspension of mainland flights, with a cost of $34 million to $47 million.
Option 2: The cost of the second option was $66 million to $84 million.
Consultations with the visitor industry suggested that shutting down mainland flights would cost $35 million a week in lost business, although the exact outcome would be uncertain because travelers could still reach Maui by stopping in Honolulu and shifting to an interisland flight, but vacationers don’t typically like to do that.
Option 3: The cost of avoiding a closure is high at $110 million to $134 million but was unanimously supported. This option would include extending runway 5-23, which is about 4,995 feet long, by 2,000 feet. (So would option 2.)
Several speakers said that would be a good thing in itself, since it would offer redundancy should some event interfere with use of 2-20. By lengthening 5-23 so that big planes could use it, operations could continue uninterrupted.
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