Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole (PHKO) is one of two international airports located on the island of Hawai’i. PHKO is located on the leeward side of the island, while Hilo International is located on the windward side. 

            The airport has gone through a number of name changes since its construction in 1970. The current name honors Kona native Ellison Onizuka, an astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986. “Keahole” refers to Keahole Point, the projection of land created by the lava flow of 1801. 

            A modernization project began in 2017. The project included the creation of a centralized security checkpoint, the construction of a large baggage facility, and the demolition of the Onizuka museum and the old tower.

            I liked the way my scenery package looked with a tower at the site of the now-absent old tower, so I included a tower from the MSFS model library. I apologize to those of you who prefer more scrupulous accuracy.

            The package includes gates (curiously, the default airport only offered GA parking), my version of the iconic tropical-themed terminal buildings, the newer tower and the firefighting facility. I’ve also dressed up some of the surrounding area with road markings, parking spaces, and biome override polygons. At the current time, I’ve left the check in and baggage claim areas as empty shells. I hope to add to those areas at some point in the future.

            I am grateful to polyhaven.com, ambientcg.com, and pexels.com for their assortment of royalty-free textures and images.

            I am also grateful to Patrick Germain for his airport2project app, which helped me create a starting point for this package.

Installation: Unzip, and place the phko-airport-kona folder in your community folder. This airport package is contained in one folder only. If you see more than one phko folder in your community folder, please remove any older versions before launching MSFS.