From its golden sun to its turquoise surf, Hawaii can always take your breath away. But it’s the colorful leis that may dazzle the most.
The island’s exquisite array of flowers, valued for their fragrances, are harvested by Hawaiians for the ancient tradition of lei making.
Hawaii native Meleana Estes picks flowers – like the valued flower puakenikeni, known as the perfume flower tree ten cent flower – to create a colorful palette for her leis. A single lei can use 300 individual flowers and take hours to make.
An “expression of aloha”
A single lei can use 300 individual flowers and take hours to make.
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CBS Sunday Morning
Hawaiians have been proudly sewing leis for more than 1,000 years. It’s a tradition that was introduced by early Polynesian settlers who wore garlands around their necks or heads as a gesture of respect for the gods.
There’s never a wrong time to bestow someone with a lei, Estes says. Today, Hawaiians hand out leis for nearly every occasion – from weddings to funerals, to airport pickups and beyond.
“Really a lei is your expression of aloha. Your love,” Estes explained, adding that it can also show a warm welcome to a house guest.
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Estes learned the intricate art of lei-making from her grandmother or “Tutu,” and published a book called “Lei Aloha” to celebrate her traditions.
“She was very intentional. I feel like my Tutu would think about it for three days prior, you know, as she’d start gathering with intention for that one person,” Estes said.
With dozens ofspecies of flowers growing on the islands, the designs are endless. Estes makes extraordinary creations for family and friends using a long needle and thread.
“It’s beautiful, very architectural,” Estes said of the process.
You can see the colorful creations on display at the Annual Lei Day Celebration in Hawaii, held every May 1 since 1929. Dozens of master lei makers enter their work for a chance of being crowned best in show by judges, including Jamie Adams Detwiler.
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“It’s really difficult” to pick just one winner, Detwiler said, noting that she looks for “what feeling” the leis bring to her and that they stay true to the lei method.
This year’s winner: a customary lei kui or sewn lei.
Getting creative
Andrew Mau, who owns a small Oahu boutique called ISLAND-BOY, shows off some unique designs.
CBS Sunday Morning
But while lei making remains popular, its future could be in peril. Suburban sprawl has paved over many flower farms and climate change has overheated remaining land. An estimated 90 percent of flowers used in leis are now imported from countries like Thailand.
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Andrew Mau, who owns a small Oahu boutique called ISLAND-BOY, where he makes leis from mostly family sourced flowers, said he’s seeing the impact firsthand.
“Everybody’s personal lei making stash or, you know, garden or mango tree or whatever you have, it’s been reduced,” he said.
The fact that a lei only lasts around two or three days has also added more stress on the island’s dwindling flower stock, forcing lei-makers like himself to adapt.
“We work with what we can get. Sometimes we don’t get enough flowers to make a lei. We use unripe fruit. An ornamental banana. We recently had someone bring in avocados from their tree,” said Mau, though he admits it breaks from tradition.
Mau’s work – particularly his “forever lei” – is so popular it regularly sells out.
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“A forever lei is our response to the perishability of flowers. We work with wood beads – seeds, shells, nuts…it doesn’t have an expiration date,” he explained.
Jonathan Vigliotti
Jonathan Vigliotti is a CBS News correspondent based in Los Angeles. Vigliotti’s reporting has taken him to more than three dozen countries and territories across six continents.
That headline is something many of us never expected to read. This April 22, 2026, is the day Hawaiian Airlines officially ends. Alaska’s reservation system takes over, Hawaiian flight numbers disappear, and all operations move to Alaska. Hawaiian joins the oneworld alliance too on the same day, but for Hawaii travelers, the alliance is not the headline. The airline you knew will cease to exist as part of the process that began with Alaska’s purchase of Hawaiian on December 3, 2023.
You can still board a plane painted with the iconic Pualani on the tail, but you will not book an HA flight anymore. Your confirmation email shows AS (Alaska). Your boarding pass shows AS. What airport departure boards and gate screens display on day one is a separate question. That and more will be revealed later.
When the code disappears, not the paint.
The Hawaiian call sign already ended last fall, when HA866 flew from Pago Pago to Honolulu on October 29, 2025, closing out 95 years of Hawaiian flight numbers in the sky. Call signs are largely for pilots and air traffic control, and most travelers never really see them. April 22 is entirely different because flight numbers exist on your itinerary, your receipt, your screenshot, and your email, and when HA disappears from those, you see it.
What booking Hawaiian looks like after April 22.
Customer service interactions will route entirely through Alaska’s systems. Schedule changes, irregular operations, rebooking rules, and automated notifications follow Alaska’s logic, and frequent travelers will notice these differences first.
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A huge reservation system change is happening behind the scenes.
April 22 is also when Alaska’s reservation system replaces what remains of Hawaiian’s Amadeus platform, which has been degraded since the 2023 Sabre-to-Amadeus migration went sideways, infuriating its customers. The cutover is supposed to resolve years of booking infrastructure problems. But we’re keeping in mind that system migrations at this scale have historically created turbulence before they stabilize, so patience may still be required.
Branding stays, for now.
The visual identity remains intact on April 22. Pualani stays on the tail, uniforms stay recognizable, and the onboard experience does not change that day. Alaska has acknowledged that Hawaiian branding carries value in Hawaii, but Alaska has not committed to how much of it stays or how long. Everything past the paint is already Alaska.
The oneworld alliance arrives on the same day.
April 22 is also the day Hawaiian becomes a full member of the oneworld alliance. International lounge access improves, elite status recognition lines up across partner airlines, and earning and redeeming miles across oneworld carriers becomes far easier. Hawaiian did not have that before and had limited partners on its own. Under Alaska, it does have, for the first time, a robust partner network.
Atmos status is part of the oneworld structure wherein Silver aligns with oneworld Ruby, Gold with oneworld Sapphire, and Platinum and Titanium with oneworld Emerald. For travelers who qualify, that means priority services and lounge access when flying internationally. Alliance benefits may work best outside of Hawaii for now, as many of you have noted.
What Alaska has promised next for Hawaii.
Alaska has announced a $600 million investment covering airport renovations at five Hawaii airports, a full A330 cabin refit starting in 2028, and a new flagship lounge at Honolulu in late 2027. All twenty-four A330s are set to receive a new business class in a 1-2-1 layout with privacy doors and direct aisle access, replacing the dated 2-2-2 configuration.
The same design team behind the 787 soft product is said to be handling the A330, and the refit was quoted as rolling out across the entire fleet over roughly 12 months starting in January 2028. A true premium economy cabin comes with it, separate from Extra Comfort, and extra legroom. Extra Comfort rebrands to Alaska Premium Class on April 22 as an Alaska alignment, but the new premium economy class does not arrive until sometime in 2028.
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The Honolulu lounge will expand to roughly five times the current Plumeria Lounge footprint at the Terminal 1 Mauka Concourse entrance. Beat of Hawaii has covered that new Honolulu Atmos Lounge separately. None of these upgrades changes anything significant if you are flying Hawaiian anytime soon.
What happens to the A321neo, A330, and the 717 interisland fleet long term under Alaska is a separate question. Beat of Hawaii has been covering that.
But Hawaiian had been running out of runway long before Alaska arrived, and the acquisition is the reason there is still a Pualani tail flying to Hawaii at all. What Alaska does with the paint, the brand, and the Hawaii routes from here is the part we’ll continue watching.
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – For weeks, students at Kalaheo High School in Kailua say thousands of critters have been crawling about campus.
Videos posted on social media showed throngs of millipedes along the school’s outdoor areas and in its gymnasium.
“It’s really gross, there’s just like millipedes all over the walls and it’s just gross, they’re crawling everywhere, and like I’m walking and I have to walk over them,” senior Cate Carmack said.
Carmack’s classmate, Lex Fuentes, added, “They’re just like all around our school. like on the ceiling, walls, floor, they’re just everywhere.”
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Fuentes and Carmack both did not really mind the millipedes, but they said the swarms were somewhat distracting.
“I was sitting in AP psych, just doing my thing. I see it on my jacket, flick it off, and I go about my day,” Fuentes said.
Junior Harper Reynolds shared that some were seen on the roof and walls.
“When I’m walking around, or like going from class to class, there’s just like millipedes on the roof and on the walls. It’s kind of weird, it’s kind of gross, it’s like, why is that even there?” Reynolds said.
The pests are likely there because of the recent rain, according to Jimmy Fitzgerald of Kilauea Pest Control, which sprayed infested areas of the school on Tuesday.
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“Kalaeho’s been very impressively proactive handling this over the years because every spring, that’s very common, the boom in insects, the rain is coming, it’s pushing them outside of their natural habitat,” Fitzgerald said.
This year, the insect’s natural habitat, the hillside behind the school, is much more saturated from the Kona low storms. Fitzgerald said the wetter conditions this year could explain why there are more millipedes at the school than usual.
“Naturally, the millipedes would be going up the trees, and hiding in the trees for a day and then coming down, but it’s been so wet in those back areas, they’ve been coming into the human spaces instead,” Fitzgerald explained.
Fitzgerald also pointed out the pests are harmless, and so is the insecticide they use to get rid of them, as the product is safer and less toxic than household bleach.
“Everything we do is people and pet-friendly, so it’s meant to impact something that’s this small, millipedes are about this small,” Fitzgerald said.
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Kilauea Pest Control used a long-lasting product expected to push out the pests over the two to three weeks.
The company will reevaluate in 30 days whether the school will need a follow-up treatment.
“It needs to be gone,” Carmack said.
The Hawaii State Department of Education reported “the problem has dramatically decreased” since Tuesday’s treatment and “school custodians are continuing to monitor the campus and will respond to any new reports.”
Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.
A federal judge in Hawaii has turned away the Trump administration’s effort to block Hawaii from filing a climate liability lawsuit against the oil and gas industry, finding the Justice Department failed to prove the federal government would be harmed by such a legal challenge.
The decision Wednesday by Senior Judge Helen Gillmor of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii marks the second loss in DOJ’s two attempts to prevent states from launching lawsuits that seek to compensate local governments for the costs of dealing with climate change.
DOJ sued Michigan and Hawaii last May as part of Trump’s efforts to target state climate change initiatives, arguing that the actions complicate U.S. energy policy. Both states went ahead with their climate lawsuits anyway, and a federal judge in January dismissed DOJ’s complaint against Michigan.
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Gillmor echoed the Michigan decision, finding the federal government did not demonstrate a concrete injury.
