For the first half of April, the decline from the mainland has been 13 percent. The daily count now routinely falls below 20,000.

Kaua`i is actually getting a few more visitors than last year, but the other islands are down in double digits.

The state usually assumes 15 percent of arrivals are returning locals, but that still means a loss of more than 30,000 visitors just in the past two weeks.

At this point, our domestic tourism faces three problems: economic uncertainty on the mainland, loss of airlift from Aloha and A.T.A., and rising airfares; including fees, like the five dollars extra U.S. Airways says it will charge for the aisle and windows seats in the first few rows of coach.

While all this is hurting domestic arrivals, Japanese arrivals so far this month are down 11 percent--a loss of 6,000 visitors. If this keeps up, economically it will be serious.

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