EDITORIAL
Airport is ready for major upgrade
While the latest plans for Honolulu International Airport fall short of the wildly ambitious ideas on the table at the height of the Japanese tourism and investment boom, they are still welcome and long overdue.
As reported by transportation writer Mike Leidemann, the state Transportation Department is launching a new effort "to transform the dark, sprawling, leaking facilities into a revitalized jewel that serves more than 20 million travelers a year."
While some of the changes are badly needed maintenance (air conditioning, signage and leaking roofs) and simple upgrades needed to catch up with the times (the last major work on the terminal was in the early 1980s), others are designed to enhance the experience of arriving or departing from the facility.
This second aspect cannot be allowed to slip into second place.
Post-9/11 security concerns, of course, are the lens through which all improvement plans must be filtered. We've regretted, for instance, that non-ticketed visitors to the airport have no suitable space to welcome or bid adieu to travelers, or opportunity to shop at airport retail stores.
While the existing airport and its environs have some graceful touches, the experience of flying in and out of Honolulu is far from what people have in mind when they think of Hawai'i. The airport is not nearly as friendly, open, natural, tropical or exciting as it could be.
And this is no small thing. First and last impressions count for a great deal in measuring the overall satisfaction of a visit to the Islands. What our visitors get is a somewhat confusing tour through a dark, closed-off structure with no clear route from here to there.
The Neighbor Island terminal, meanwhile, is a testimonial to efficiency over beauty.
As the improvements go forward, planners and engineers should think long and hard about the interior gardens that once were the centerpiece of the airport. While the gardens are still there — for the most part — they have been effectively taken away from the airport experience for most visitors.
Our airport needs sunlight, tropical foliage, Asian and Pacific art, music, entertainment excitement and a pervasive feeling of aloha.
All plans for airport improvement must be based on sober, realistic projections for future passenger traffic. An airports development plan approved by the Legislature in 1990, including a people mover and a huge international terminal, was to have eaten up $2.5 billion by 1996.
It was almost a blessing that the plan died. It was based on projections of a doubling of tourist numbers by now — a projection that in hindsight wasn't realistic or sustainable. Now, these latest plans are a fresh opportunity to give Ho-nolulu the airport it deserves.
