Hawaii holiday will be remembered

As first-time visitors to Oahu, we just had to write and say how much we enjoyed our stay here. We were so impressed by the friendliness of everyone we encountered and the way the excursions we took were so well organized.

Rest assured we will be extolling the virtues of this great holiday location to everyone when we get home to Australia, and have plans to return in the not-so-distant future.

UH reviewing flood's effect on projects

Thank you for your continuous and conscientious coverage of the damage caused to the Manoa campus of the University of Hawaii system by the flash flood of Oct. 30.

I feel compelled, however, to correct a misimpression your Nov. 6 story may have left with readers about the status of research in the wake of this disaster. You note that I referred to one federal agency's request to one of our Manoa research units about the status of some 90 projects now under way. My comments quoted in the story about the probable successful outcome of most of our research projects referred only to that field report about those 90 grants from one of our Manoa units.

The University of Hawaii receives more than 1,500 grants per year totaling some $330 million; since many are multiyear grants, at any one time we have several thousand grants under way. We are still assessing our ability to complete all of these grants. While we hope for a timely and successful outcome for each of these projects, until our post-disaster assessment of our entire research enterprise is complete it would be premature and likely misleading to generalize from the small sample of 90 grants to the entire group of several thousand grants.

U.S. isn't attacking schools in Iraq

I feel I must respond to John A. Broussard's Nov. 9 letter regarding the inadvertent strafing of a school in New Jersey by an F-16. He takes the incident as an opportunity to make completely unfounded accusations against our military operations in Iraq, although he is apparently not concerned with our operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia or Kosovo.

If Broussard had ever been involved with air operations, he would know the tremendous lengths we go to in order to avoid collateral damage, to the detriment of our own safety. The damage from public opinion can be far more dangerous than the danger from anti-aircraft artillery pieces by a mosque or hospital. Based upon recent press reports claiming more than 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed in the conflict, I am sure we would hear about it if real incidents occur involving the U.S. military attacking a mosque, hospital or school.

And yes, the incident in New Jersey was an accident. Accidents happen, even with multimillion-dollar aircraft.

Campaign signs should be taken down

It is disgraceful that political signs of Inam Rahman, an unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate in the primary election, still litter the highways and byways on Oahu and the neighbor islands. Rahman lost the primary on Sept. 18. He's had almost two months to get his signs down. Rahman should do us all a favor and get them down.

Carry-on bags add to airline fuel costs

Regarding the Nov. 5 story about the weight of airline passengers adding to the amount of fuel needed: For every passenger, there are two to three bags plus carry-on. For every passenger, the general rules were 50 pounds for domestic flights and 70 pounds for international flights. Today, bags are the size of body bags and weigh up to 100 pounds each.

The math is simple -- excess weight is the real drag on the plane.

If you simply increase the individual passenger's body weight by 10 pounds and multiply it by the number of seats in a typical airliner, that is only part of the problem. It is the bags that cost the airline extra fuel, and simply charging a fee of $25 or $50 for the excess does not compensate for the fuel and the thrust that is needed to lift the weight.

The airlines have only themselves to blame for their higher fuel costs, for accepting the increased weight of carry-on bags.