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It’s that time of year: Crowds flock to Hawaii malls to snag big Black Friday deals

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It’s that time of year: Crowds flock to Hawaii malls to snag big Black Friday deals


HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The biggest shopping day of the year is upon us! Hundreds are flocking to Hawaii malls to snag some big Black Friday deals and kickoff the holiday shopping spree.

You may not see the crowds from past years but big box and local stores are still hoping to get shoppers in their doors.

Popular malls like Pearlridge Center and Ala Moana Shopping Center saw shoppers lining up the shops early Friday morning.

While the deals are nice, Black Friday shopping is also an annual tradition for many families in Hawaii.

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Catching a ride on Pearlridge’s Express Train made for keiki, walking around the mall and taking in all the holiday decorations are some of the ways families mark the day.

The National Retail Federation predicts 74% of Americans will be holiday shopping from Black Friday through Cyber Monday.

That’s about 182 million people — the highest amount since 2017.

From now through December, the group says Americans will spend nearly $1 trillion.

RELATED COVERAGE:
  • It’s the most wonderful time of the year for thieves, too. Here’s how to protect yourself
  • LIST: Plan your 2023 holiday shopping with these Black Friday mall hours



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Hawaii

Queen’s plans new hospital in Kailua-Kona with helipad, housing

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Queen’s plans new hospital in Kailua-Kona with helipad, housing


The Queen’s Health Systems plans to build an 80-bed hospital next to the Kailua-Kona Costco on Hawaii Island that would include a helipad to cut travel time to its trauma center on Oahu and, critically, construct adjacent, below-market-­rate housing to recruit and retain some of the estimated 300 hospital staff, nurses and doctors.

The campus, including a medical office building, would start to go up in two to three years on 30 acres of land Queen’s owns, with it opening perhaps five years from now, according to Queen’s President and CEO Jason Chang.

The project would cost $400 million to $500 million, with possible funding from private investments and philanthropic contributions, Queen’s said.

“What we’re trying to do is create a regional health system for the Big Island, so this is in partnership with our existing hospital, Queen’s North Hawaii Community Hospital,” Chang said. “We’ll be bringing more access, better care and more specialists to the north and west sides of the island.”

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Queen’s plans surprised officials at the 94-bed Kona Community Hospital, located south of the Queen’s site closer to Captain Cook.

Hawaii Health Systems Corp., which operates the Kona Community and Kohala hospitals, had been looking to build another hospital closer to the main population center in Kailua-­Kona, including potentially on the land where Queen’s plans to build its still-­unnamed hospital, said Clayton McGhan, HHSC West Hawaii regional CEO.

Because of the health care needs of the west side of the Big Island, McGhan said he supports Queen’s plans, especially its goal of building workforce housing for hospital staff.

While some refer to the neighbor islands as providing “rural health care,” McGhan said that in Kona, “I actually think we’re remote or frontier health care.”

Based on a needs assessment funded by the state Legislature, West Hawaii’s population is expected to grow 11% over the next decade.

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Last year, 22,000 patients were treated in the Kona Community Hospital’s emergency room and the number is on track to jump to 24,000 this year McGhan said.

But the 50-year-old Kona Community lacks the volume of specialized cases to justify full-time specialists. So it relies on specialists at Queen’s to consult via telemedicine technology on stroke and neurological cases, along with helping with a new electronic medical records system, McGhan said.

A new Queen’s hospital in Kailua-Kona would be welcomed, he said.

“We don’t look at it as competition,” McGhan said. “I know what our community needs. We have to celebrate that because it’s going to meet the community’s demands. The main thing is we’re supportive of any additional resources that would come here.”

• • •

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Kona Community Hospital needs 25 more doctors trained in psychiatric care, cardiology, adult primary care and pediatric specialties, according to McGhan, who applauded Queen’s plan to build 150 condo and apartment units that would be rented to hospital staff at below-market rates, with the option to also buy at below-­market prices.

When it’s time to sell, owners would have to sell to another hospital employee at similar rates, Chang said.

McGhan called the concept “fantastic. It’s hard to attract staff here. So we’re going to be supportive of any new workforce housing.”

Gov. Josh Green started his Hawaii medical career at a rural hospital in Ka‘u. As lieutenant governor, he worked weekend ER shifts at the Kona hospital while running for governor.

“It’s very exciting to see health care weigh in on the need for affordable housing. I’ve always said that housing is health care,” Green said.

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For Queen’s, Chang hopes to finish building the housing before the hospital itself opens to ensure it has long-term staffing.

“We believe housing’s such a huge need and you can’t recruit nurses, doctors, technologists, social workers if you don’t,” Chang said.

Because of the difficulty recruiting health care workers — let alone specialists — to the neighbor islands, Queen’s 35-bed North Hawaii Community Hospital relies on traveling nurses and doctors.

It’s hired four full-time oncologists over the last 10 years who all left after a couple of years, Chang said.

“It takes a year to bring someone new in,” he said. “Traveling physicians don’t plan to stay. It’s a real challenge in rural communities. We can’t hire permanent people because they can’t find housing — affordable or just inventory, period. If we don’t address housing ourselves, we’re going to have the same problem.”

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By providing below-market-rate condos and apartments, Chang hopes to retain some traveling health care workers for the new hospital.

Queen’s physicians also work closely with medical students at the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, including students who already work with patients at Queen’s. They also could rotate through the new hospital, along with one or two post-­graduate medical residents every couple of years.

With Queen’s residents, he said, “I just need one or two to stay every few years. That would be fantastic and it makes them appreciate the need for rural health care.”

• • •

Many details of the new hospital campus still need to be worked out, such as how many stories the facility would have. But the hospital probably will be around 250,000 square feet in size, Chang said.

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The community wants a trauma center and specialists to treat heart attacks and strokes, but West Hawaii doesn’t have the volume of cases to attract or retain “a top-notch cardiologist,” Chang said. “Just treating 30 heart attacks a year, they’re going to leave.”

Instead, the hospital will focus on “diagnostic cardiology, diagnostic neurology — state-of-the-art diagnostics — and general surgery,” he said.

There also will be an emergency room “to stabilize you and fly you to Queen’s.”

For some neighbor-island patients flying to The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu on an airplane, it can sometimes take three to four hours between when they call 911, get taken by ambulance to their local hospital, diagnosed, driven by ambulance to an airport, put on a plane to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and then taken by ambulance to the hospital, Chang said.

“You end up with a massive amount of transfer time,” he said.

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Instead, a twin-engine H145 helicopter is scheduled to be delivered to Queen’s in 2026.

It’s being paid for by philanthropists Lynne and Marc Benioff, who have a home on the Big Island. Marc Benioff is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce and owns Time magazine.

The couple already have donated $5 million, dedicated solely to Hawaii island health care workers, to augment $30 million in state funds to pay off student loans to keep health care workers from leaving Hawaii.

Once the helicopter goes into use at the new hospital, Chang said Hawaii County crews will staff it to fly patients to Queen’s trauma center.

“How do you get somebody to the trauma center, which is Queen’s Medical Center Punchbowl, as fast as you can?” Chang asked. “If you can go rooftop to rooftop, you cut out all that ambulance time.”

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Benioff, Chang said, “recognizes that air transport is a real issue.”

Queen’s plans help address the growing need for health care in the area, according to Green.

In a follow-up statement, Green said: “The West Hawaii community truly needs a new hospital as Kona Hospital has aged, and is now further away from the region’s population center. It’s exciting to see Queen’s begin the process of raising capital and building relationships to launch this new facility. There is certainly a pathway for the state to either support or even partner with Queen’s on this project, once all of the stakeholders have come to a consensus on how to move forward.”





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Man surrenders after 5-hour barricade at busy Honolulu store

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Man surrenders after 5-hour barricade at busy Honolulu store


HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – After five hours, a barricade at the Don Quijote store on Kaheka Street ended peacefully Wednesday night.

The incident started just after 5 p.m., prompting the evacuation of shoppers and employees at what is one of the busiest stores at any time of year, but especially during the holidays.

We’re told that the man started a disturbance and then attempted to start a fire, which activated the fire sprinkler system.

Sources said he barricaded himself in a storage room at the back of the store.

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He surrendered and was taken into custody without incident at 10:10 p.m.

Dozens of people waited in the parking lot — a mix of shoppers whose search for bargains and holiday gifts got interrupted, those arriving to shop, and employees.

Many only heard about what happened, or were caught by surprise by the huge police presence surrounding the building.

Michael Brewster said he was on his way in when “one worker down the road at the restaurant said, ‘You can’t go in. Somebody went cuckoo, throwing bottles in the aisles and stuff.‘”

The police department had a large presence at the scene, including someone who appeared to be a crisis negotiator and Specialized Services Division officers.

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There were also Emergency Medical Services personnel in full protective gear.

Kaheka and Poni streets were closed during the incident.



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It’s Official: Redeem AAdvantage Miles on Hawaiian Airlines Mainland-to-Hawaii Flights After a 9-Year Hiatus! – View from the Wing

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It’s Official: Redeem AAdvantage Miles on Hawaiian Airlines Mainland-to-Hawaii Flights After a 9-Year Hiatus! – View from the Wing


It’s Official: Redeem AAdvantage Miles on Hawaiian Airlines Mainland-to-Hawaii Flights After a 9-Year Hiatus!


American Airlines has long partnered with Hawaiian Airlines. Hawaiian has now been acquired by American’s ‘West Coast Alliance’ and oneworld partner Alaska Airlines. And so a change has been made to using American AAdvantage miles on Hawaiian Airlines: you can now redeem AAdvantage miles to fly to Hawaii!.

  • In September 2015, American stopped allowing AAdvantage members to redeem miles between Hawaii and the mainland U.S..
  • Airlines frequently partnered with Hawaiian for their intra-Hawaii flights, and to some extent their route network beyond Hawaii. However awards to Hawaii are popular and partner redemptions there are expensive.
  • Hawaiian is on its way towards being integrated into Alaska Airlines. They will achieve a single operating certificate, at which point the carrier will be part of oneworld. Alaska will retain a separate brand identity for Hawaii flights, but it will be one airline. We’re going to get these redemptions eventually, anyway – likely 2026. It’s good to see it now!

Hawaiian award availability, especially from the West Coast (and Austin, while it lasts), is better than award availability to Hawaii on American or Alaska. I do expect Alaska’s revenue management to change this over time, as well as to better sell these flights.

You can use Honolulu as a one-stop gateway across the Pacific as well. Hawaiian currently flies to,

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  • Auckland and Sydney
  • Fukuoka, Tokyo Haneda and Narita, and Osaka in Japan
  • Seoul
  • Papeete, Pago Pago, and Raratonga

One thing American needs to do is fix mileage-earning on Hawaiian Airlines. I’ve heard from several readers who are affected by Alaska and Hawaii shifting their flying between the two airlines.

American AAdvantage members were encouraged to travel on Alaska Airlines, because that earned both miles and status credit in the AAdvantage program. However, schedules shifting such that Hawaiian will now operate a planned flight means this changes.

There are people purchasing tickets for a flight on Alaska, who will learn that the flight is going to be a Hawaiian flight. This is going to happen more and more prior to a single operating certificate on the two carriers. But they only bought the ticket because it was going to earn them credit with American.

Unfortunately, Hawaiian Airlines flights with a Hawaiian flight number do not earn Loyalty Points (credit towards AAdvantage elite status). That’s a gap which should be addressed.

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Nonetheless, it’s great news today that there’s more mileage-earning and much more flexibility with mileage redemption on Hawaiian Airlines now than there’s been in the last nine years.

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