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Hawaiian Airlines pilots represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, Intl., (ALPA) stepped up to assist their neighbors in the Pacific, making a substantial cash donation over the weekend to the American Red Cross for disaster relief efforts.

The Hawaiian pilots contributed $15,000 to the Red Cross’ “Kokua for the Pacific” fundraiser at the Aloha Tower Marketplace in Honolulu. The Kokua for the Pacific event featured a host of musicians and other entertainers who raised money for disaster victims in American Samoa, Indonesia and the Philippines.

“Our pilots and many of our fellow employees have friends and family who live and work in these areas,  and we feel a definite connection with them,” said Capt. Eric Sampson, chairman of ALPA’s Hawaiian pilot group.

Earlier this year, the Hawaiian pilots donated nearly two tons of food to the Hawaii Food Bank, and recruited a team of pilot volunteers to help build a house in Waimanalo for Habitat for Humanity.

ALPA pilots will be serving food to the homeless at the River of Life Mission on Thanksgiving Day, and assisting the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve’s “Toys for Tots” campaign this Christmas.

“One of our union’s slogans is ‘We are ALPA.’ We are Pacific islanders too, and we are united in the common purpose of helping others, not just by flying people from island to island and to and from the mainland, but by reaching out with a helping hand when they need one,” Sampson said.

Founded in 1931, ALPA is the world’s largest pilot union, representing almost 53,000 pilots at 36 airlines in the United States and Canada, including more than 400 Hawaiian pilots.

— Find out more:

www.alpa.org

Photography by Baron Sekiya/Hawaii247.org

MEDIA RELEASE

The new Apple iPhone 3G S allows users to easily type diacritical marks essential for text messaging, emailing and Web surfing in Hawaiian, said an assistant professor of Hawaiian language at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo.

“Users do not have to install custom fonts and keyboard in order to display ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i with contemporary orthography on the iPhone and Macintosh,” said Keola Donaghy of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language. “That used to be a big barrier for users over the years – having to install custom software and perhaps later having to upgrade it.

Version 3.0 of the iPhone’s operating system allows users to type in the ‘okina (a glottal stop) and kahakō (a macron which appears over vowels in Hawaiian and other Polynesian languages). In addition, iPhone has an option to display the days of the week, month and other text in Hawaiian.

“Apple has been supporting the Hawaiian language since 1994 when they donated computers and offered support to the staff at Hale Kuamo‘o, the Hawaiian Language Center at UH Hilo,” Donaghy said. “These computers were used to develop and operate Leokī, the first intranet telecommunications system completely implemented in an indigenous language, and Kualono, one of the first completely bilingual Websites on the Internet. With assistance from Hale Kuamo‘o’s technology staff, Apple engineers added a Hawaiian keyboard, localized date strings, sorting routines and other Hawaiian language support to Macintosh OS X in 2002.

“Hawai‘i is such a small market that it doesn’t make a lot of sense economically for Apple to support Hawaiian language they way that they have, but they continue to support us by adding functionality that assists in our efforts to take the language into the future,” he added.

The Hawaiian language support is included with the new iPhone 3G S, but the iPhone 3.0 update can also be installed on older iPhone 3G and iPod Touch devices, Donaghy said. He added that the Hawaiian language option can be accessed on the standard U.S. English keyboard on the device.

“To type a vowel with a kahakō over it, touch any vowel on the keyboard and hold a finger over it for a second or two, and that vowel will appear in a pop-up list with several diacritic characters,” Donaghy explained. “Drag a finger over the vowel-macron combination then raise the finger off the keyboard.

“To type the ‘okina, one must first toggle the keyboard to display the number and punctuation marks by pressing the ‘123’ key,” he added. “Select the apostrophe key and hold it for a second or two. A pop-up list showing some variant characters will appear. Drag a finger over the character to the far left, which is the ‘okina.”

For more information, contact Donaghy at (808) 974-7798 or email donaghy@hawaii.edu.