Armstrong buys 11 acres for Ko Olina development

Commercial and residential construction firm Armstrong Builders Ltd. has bought 11 acres of undeveloped land inside the Ko Olina Resort complex for a 120-unit residential attached condominium project.

The Sand Island-based company said yesterday it had purchased the land for an undisclosed price from One Keahole Partners, a general partnership affiliated with Ko Olina developers Jeff Stone and Kevin Showe. One Keahole paid $6 million for the property in March 2000.

Armstrong said it plans to build two- and three-bedroom units, with construction scheduled to start in early 2002. The project will be called Kai Lani at Ko Olina (Hawaii) and sales will start later this year.

Viata Online signs Alaskan vacation provider

Viata Online, one of two Hawaii-based companies to develop software that lets travel sellers book air-hotel-automobile packages using inventory available exactly at the time of the booking, said it has signed Hawaiian Vacations Ltd. as a user.

Based in Anchorage, Alaska, Hawaiian Vacations has been bringing tourists to Hawaii on charter flights since 1982. It is the first travel wholesaler and charter operator to agree to use Viata's EZREZ software, which creates direct, real-time connections between travel sellers, such as travel agents, and providers, such as hotels, airlines and rental car companies, for bookings, payment and other aspects of the travel business.

Hawaiian Vacations, which provides year-round nonstop flights between Anchorage and Honolulu, is Viata's second major client. The other is Outrigger Hotels & Resorts.

Another provider of the same type of service, Get2Hawaii, an affiliate of travel provider Panda Group, earlier signed Hawaiian Airlines and Panda as its first two big clients.

Airline passenger traffic climbs 1.9% this year

NEW YORK >> Total 2001 year-to-date passenger traffic for 18 U.S. airlines rose 1.9 percent to 211.46 billion revenue passenger miles from 207.46 billion a year earlier. A revenue passenger mile equals one paying passenger carried one mile.

The year-to-date load factor, the percentage of available seats actually sold, fell 0.5 points from a year ago to 69.2 percent from 69.7 percent a year ago.

The year-to-date available seat miles, a measure of total capacity, rose 2.7 percent to 305.67 billion miles from 297.76 billion in 2000.