The question has made its way back to the public spotlight, thanks to an initiative effort and a subsequent lawsuit filed by the LVCVA to block it.

The latest volley involves two initiatives filed Feb. 29 by Bob Seale, a former assemblyman and state treasurer. The initiatives are called the "Education Enhancement Act" and the "Funding Nevada's Priorities Act." Both would divert revenue generated by taxes on rooms in Clark County. The Education Enhancement Act would grab tax money for education; the Funding Nevada's Priorities Act would take it for transportation and public safety projects as well as education.

On the surface, it appears the initiatives would have little trouble getting the 58,836 signatures necessary by May 20 to get it on next fall's election. After all, who wouldn't want tourists to pay for things like schools, roads, police officers and firefighters?

But the LVCVA, in a brief in support of the suit seeking declaratory relief in District Court in Carson City, says the whole initiative campaign is Las Vegas Sands' latest volley in its bid to bust up the LVCVA and its convention center.

The advocacy groups fronted by Seale, the LVCVA says in its brief, "purport to sponsor two constitutional initiatives. Yet, they are simply fronts for these initiatives' true sponsor - Las Vegas Sands LLC." The finger could not be pointed more directly.

As one would expect in a legal argument, the LVCVA brief points to a variety of flaws in Seale's initiatives.

While initiatives are only supposed to address one topic, the Seale initiatives address more than that, the LVCVA alleges. That argument, incidentally, is almost standard in an opposition to an initiative.

The LVCVA points out another flaw: While all the room tax money comes from sources within Clark County, the state funds that would be generated would benefit statewide programs. I would think most people would agree that a system that would allow taxes generated in Las Vegas to support projects in the far corners of Nevada isn't right.

While the LVCVA's complaint and brief clearly blame the Sands' bid to torpedo the LVCVA as the motivation for the initiatives, nowhere do they address the original question: Is it fair for public tax revenue to be used to support a convention center that competes with privately operated convention centers?

The argument the LVCVA frequently uses when that question comes up is that the LVCVA is a legally established board and that the majority of its members endorses the concept of operating a public convention center. The LVCVA staff provides leads for all Las Vegas resorts looking to host conventions and conventioneers, even Las Vegas Sands.

The LVCVA has even applauded Sands convention efforts from time to time, even though the Sands Expo Center and the Las Vegas Convention Center are clearly competitors.

It's also a little puzzling why Sands is the only company that complains about the LVCVA and its efforts. MGM Mirage has a convention center at Mandalay Bay that competes for many of the same shows as the Convention Center and the Sands Expo Center.

MGM Mirage's management is as highly regarded as any in the resort industry and one would think that if they thought the LVCVA was taking profits away from them that they would take the Sands' side in the issue.

But they don't. In fact, they are represented on the LVCVA board of directors and usually vote with the majority. The philosophical question of whether competing against private enterprise is wrong never comes up.

But rest assured that Sands will keep bringing it up until something changes.

In other tourism news:

Aloha gone: A week after telling customers it would continue to fly its trans-Pacific routes, Aloha Airlines announced over the weekend that, instead, it was shutting down.

Aloha was one of the smallest operators at McCarran International Airport, carrying 44,260 passengers to and from Las Vegas in 2007. The airline operated only once a day to and from Oakland, Calif., where it connected with flights to several Hawaiian destinations.

The airline recommended that customers with advanced reservations contact their travel agents or the airline to change them. Aloha has a business partnership with United Airlines, which could accommodate Las Vegas customers to Hawaii via Los Angeles or San Francisco.

Delta cutbacks: Delta Air Lines has confirmed that it will trim some of its round trips to and from Las Vegas beginning with the June schedule.

Anthony Black, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based carrier, said Delta would eliminate nonstop service between McCarran and Orlando and Los Angeles. In addition, the airline will reduce nonstop flights to Salt Lake City from four to three a day and to its Atlanta hub from nine to eight a day, while adding a fifth daily flight to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Other airline alternatives are available on the abandoned routes. Southwest and US Airways each have nonstop flights to Orlando while Los Angeles International fliers include Southwest, US Airways, United, Northwest and American and its commuter cousin, American Eagle.

When the cuts are implemented, Delta will have an average of about 19 flights a day through Las Vegas.

The company's Orlando service was implemented as part of Delta's partnership with the Walt Disney Co. and to encourage tourists to visit Walt Disney World.

The other changes are reflective of the company's bid to focus more on international travel, with the JFK airport being Delta's key gateway to Europe, home of its most important overseas destinations.

Los Angeles was on the schedule to shuttle overseas fliers from Asia into Las Vegas, but Asia isn't as important to the company as Europe (especially if the company winds up merging with Northwest, which has a foothold in Asia.)

Atlanta and Salt Lake City are other key Delta hubs, but because domestic travel is being de-emphasized by the company officials apparently felt losing a couple of flights would not hurt it.

Bad week for US Airways: The second-busiest air carrier at McCarran, US Airways, had a bad PR week that got worse as the week progressed.

First, one of its pilots became the first to discharge a weapon on a plane since 9/11. The incident occurred aboard one of the airline's A319 jets when it was landing in Charlotte, N.C., following a flight from Denver. The pilot, among many who have received special training since 9/11 and are permitted to carry guns on flights, apparently was returning the weapon to its holster when it went off and put a bullet hole through the fuselage.

Because the plane was at 8,000 feet, there was no decompression and, luckily, the bullet didn't hit any critical aeronautic systems or wires.

The story got worse for the airline as the week progressed when Charlotte airport officials accidentally released the pilot's name in a redacted report. Government officials and airlines normally withhold a pilot's name from the public until an investigation is completed, but when a Charlotte newspaper requested an incident report from the police, it was given a copy that didn't have the name blacked out.

In a separate incident, a small piece of a wing on one of US Airways' Boeing 757 jets became dislodged, struck and cracked a window and fell to the ground while the plane was in flight.

That story also got worse as US Airways found similar problems on seven other planes during a fleet inspection.

The two confidence-damaging incidents came on the heels of Federal Aviation Administration charges that Southwest Airlines didn't follow proper procedures on some Boeing 737 inspections.

MD-80 groundings: On top of the Southwest Airlines and US Airways troubles last week, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines angered customers by grounding and inspecting their MD-80 jet fleets, canceling more than 700 flights over two days in the process.

The MD-80 issue involves wiring bundles in wheel wells with a focus on a 1-inch spacing of lacing cord wrapped around wiring sheathing. American and Delta made the inspections voluntarily.

Maurice Gallagher, chief executive of Allegiant Air, whose entire fleet is comprised of MD-80s, said the issue doesn't affect Allegiant's jets.