At Kahului Airport, a Dallas visitor called at 6 p.m. to report he was among several hundred Aloha passengers unable to get on their flights. Tyler Cox said he had missed a 3:55 p.m. flight to Honolulu that was to connect to a flight to Dallas-Fort Worth.

"I feel sorry for the ground people. They can't do anything about it," he said. But they also had not been able to provide any information on how long the delays will continue, he said.

An Aloha spokesman, Stu Glauberman, said the problem began Thursday, when one of the Boeing 737-200 jets was forced out of service because of an engine failure. A second aircraft was already out of service undergoing scheduled maintenance, he said.

Normally, there are eight aircraft available for the interisland routes, Glauberman said. Having two aircraft out of service for an extended period during a heavy travel period — the Memorial Day weekend — resulted in backups on the interisland routes, he said.

"We're short on aircraft, and Friday is a particularly heavy travel day because of the weekend," Glauberman said. "There are delays throughout the interisland system, although we have maintained our trans-Pacific schedule."

He said Aloha expects to have all of its planes back in service today and should be able to restore the schedule. Personnel at each of the airport stations will be accommodating passengers who are stranded by the backup, he said.

The Boeing 737-200s used on interisland routes have a capacity of 127 passengers. The Boeing 737-700 aircraft used on Mainland routes carry 124 passengers.