+ HAWAII AIRLINES WAGE WAR. Hawaii interisland airlines waged war on each other in 2007, at the ticket counter and in the courtroom. Hawaiian Airlines wins a suit against Mesa Air, persuading a judge that go! was launched with the illegal use of inside information Mesa gained as a prospective buyer of both Hawaiian and Aloha Airlines. Mesa agreed not to keep the information or use it to found a competitor, and then did. The judge awarded damages in the tens of millions of dollars, several times Mesa’s 2006 profit. Mesa, falling into the red in 2007, failed to convince the same judge to rehear the case and at year’s end was filing an appeal with a higher court. In the meantime, a 2008 court date was set for a suit against Mesa by Aloha. In the meantime, Big Island-based Mokulele Air converted from a charter service to a scheduled carrier to rebrand itself as go!Express and fly to smaller markets in competition with Island Air and Pacific Wings. Island Air pulled in its horns and laid off some of its work force — and its CEO left the company — while Pacific Wings launched a new division in New Mexico, undercutting Mesa in a “turnabout is fair play” maneuver.

+ ROUGH SEAS FOR SUPERFERRY. Hawaii Superferry, the first-ever attempt to operate interisland marine passenger service with multihulled vessels, launched late in 2007 after court opposition on Maui and protestors in the water on Kauai. Superferry won its battles, but wound up launching in the winter, when seas are rougher, and was bedeviled by sick passengers and canceled voyages in ocean swells. What starts as a harbor use controversy expands into a larger discussion of quality-of-life issues on neighbor islands, and the governor bans Superferry passengers from carrying opihi.

+ COPS CATCH CONS COPPING COPPER. Copper thefts worsened in 2007, often leaving highway lights out for miles, but for the first time it seemed that police were making real progress in catching the people involved, arresting not only some thieves but also mounting a sting operation against a stolen copper buyer, a business that had portrayed itself as above such activity. The family-owned business was embarrassed and the son said his mother, who bought the copper from an undercover officer, didn’t know what she was doing.

+ SPORTS: UH football has an undefeated season. The triumph of June Jones, Colt Brennan and an unusually talented and cohesive team drew attention away from earlier controversies over UH athletic costs, schedules, and problems with aging Aloha Stadium. The Honolulu Marathon, previously held up as a remarkable example of a well-run annual event with no government financial support, ends the year with egg on its face after tracking technology fails to work — partly the runners’ fault — leaving thousands with no finishing time. Michelle Wie falls from grace while Tadd Fujikawa goes pro.

+ HUMAN INTEREST: Genshiro Kawamoto, the Japanese real estate tycoon notorious for buying hundreds of homes and then letting them become delapidated, burnished his image in some quarters while confirming his wackiness in others by installing Native Hawaiian families in ritzy Kahala homes — after first filling in the pools with rocks. Momi Akana gets her home rebuilt by “Extreme Makeover,” and is portrayed as a struggling do-gooder until someone notices she makes a very good salary and her husband is a bank executive. Bountyhunter Dog Chapman extracates himself from legal trouble in Mexico only to lose face when he leaves a racist voicemail criticizing his son’s black girlfriend that the son sells to a tabloid, and Honolulu has its own race controversy when slurs are yelled in a Waikele parking lot beating involving a local family with a history of using its fists. Hawaii and the world mourns Don Ho.