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Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Tuesday, May 16, 2000

Murdock's offer extended to Friday

David H. Murdock's Flexi-Van Leasing Inc. has extended until Friday its offer to acquire the 73 percent of Castle & Cooke Inc.'s shares it doesn't already own. The offer of $17 a share, made March 29 by Murdock, who is chairman of both Flexi-Van and Castle & Cooke, was to have expired yesterday. The stock closed today at $17.62. Murdock said a special committee of independent directors of Castle & Cooke, set up to examine the offer, asked for more time.

The committee now has until the end of the business day Friday to express its opinion. Castle & Cooke, founded in Hawaii but now based in Los Angeles, owns resorts on Lanai and builds homes in Hawaii and on the mainland.

Hawaiian Air pays $67,018 EPA fine

Hawaiian Airlines Inc. has agreed to pay a penalty of $67,018 for violating toxic waste rules in its operations at Honolulu Airport, said the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office in San Francisco. Based on an EPA inspection last year, Hawaiian was cited for operating a hazardous waste storage facility without a permit, as well as for inadequate oversight and management of hazardous wastes such as paint solvents. Hawaiian has since corrected the violations and is now in compliance with the law, the EPA said.

United to hire pilots to ease shortage

CHICAGO -- United Airlines says it's hiring more pilots and "fine-tuning" its flight schedule to compensate for a continuing shortage of crews that has forced a series of cancellations.

The world's largest airline said it canceled 48 flights this morning due to a pilot shortage that the pilots' union blames on United's staffing practices. Yesterday, 42 of its 141 cancellations were attributed to crew shortages, the rest to bad weather. Some pilots have declined to work overtime, upset at what they say is the airline's failure to hire more pilots, according to the Air Line Pilots Association. Union spokesman Herb Hunter, denied any job action was being encouraged by the union.