Auto dealer to give away bowl tickets

Hawaii residents hungry for food and football will benefit from a partnership between Toyota-Hawaii and the Hawaii Foodbank.

Toyota-Hawaii will give away tickets to the Dec. 24 Sheraton Hawaii Bowl featuring the University of Hawaii and University of Tulsa in return for donations of canned food this weekend.

The auto dealer will give a pair of tickets for every five cans of food dropped off tomorrow through Sunday at its seven dealerships on four islands. The limit is two pairs of tickets per family while supplies last. Toyota-Hawaii said it hopes to give away 1,000 tickets.

The dealer will continue to accept food donations through December, with a goal of collecting 5,000 pounds. 

Hawaiian Air traffic up 1.8 percent

Hawaiian Airlines’ passenger traffic edged up 1.8 percent in November as the airline offered more capacity and filled a greater percentage of its seats.

The carrier had 676,823 passengers compared with 664,959 in the year-ago period while its load factor, or the percentage of seats filled, increased 0.8 percentage points to 85.2 percent from 84.4 percent.

Revenue passenger miles, or one paying passenger transported one mile, jumped 11.5 percent to 718.4 million from 644.3 million. Available seat miles, or one seat transported one mile, gained 10.5 percent to 843.6 million from 763.4 million.

In a separate report, Hawaiian led the nation in on-time performance in October with 95.4 percent of its flights arriving on schedule, according to the monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. Hawaiian also was first in fewest canceled flights with one cancellation out of 5,529 total flights, or less than 0.1 percent. Hawaiian was 11th of 18 airlines for mishandled bags with 3.2 reports per 1,000 passengers and 13th in consumer complaints with 1.14 complaints per 100,000 enplanements.

Big Isle’s Volcano House in limbo

The Volcano House, a Big Island hotel and restaurant that has been closed for a year, remains in limbo.

The landmark facility atop Kilauea Caldera already has undergone upgrades to improve seismic and fire safety. And a committee has been formed to go over multiple bids to succeed concessionaire Ken Fujiyama, whose 10-year contract ended last year. But park concession manager Walt Poole told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald there has still been no selection of a new management contractor.

The Park Service extended the bidding deadline twice since last spring, and the franchise fee the agency wanted has been lowered. Fujiyama told the newspaper that the Park Service is asking too much of prospective concessionaires.

HUD probes lenders’ practices

LOS ANGELES » Federal officials launched an investigation yesterday to determine whether 22 mortgage lenders have been discriminating against qualified African-American and Latino borrowers by denying them government-insured loans.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said the inquiry is in response to complaints filed Tuesday by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition accusing 22 banks nationwide of violating fair housing laws.

The coalition said the lenders denied Federal Housing Administration-insured loans to borrowers with credit scores that met the federal standard of 580 to be eligible for the insurance against default, but the lenders set higher credit score thresholds.

The Washington-based NCRC claims those requirements disproportionately harm black and Hispanic communities, since many minority borrowers’ credit scores fall between the federal threshold of 580 and the higher benchmarks set by the banks.

Lenders took issue with the coalition’s allegations against Bank of the West, Paramount Residential Mortgage Group Inc. and MetLife Bank N.A., among others. San Francisco-based Bank of the West, a sister bank of First Hawaiian Bank and a subsidiary of BancWest Corp., said its policy is "fair and prudent lending" based on customers’ complete credit profiles. "Through objective credit underwriting criteria based on a borrower’s complete credit profile, Bank of the West has been able to approve FHA borrowers with credit scores below 600, even in the current difficult housing market," spokesman Jim Cole said.

ON THE MOVE

Mobi PCS has promoted Kara Honda to training and development manager from handset and product specialist. She will be responsible for creation and management of product, policy and procedure knowledge for all Mobi retail employees; develop training materials and deliver training for new products and services; and provide all training to new authorized dealers and sales employees.

The First Hawaiian Bank Foundation has given the Domestic Violence Action Center a $10,000 grant to fund services such as support, crisis intervention, legal assistance and education to the survivors of domestic abuse in Hawaii.

Access Information Management has hired Linda Chun as account manager at the company’s Aiea office. She has worked in the sales department of Honolulu Magazine and has experience in the communications and marketing industries.