HONOLULU -- A shortage of trees had families scrambling this weekend in Hawaii.

It is reminiscent of what happened five years ago.

One vendor is trying to airfreight fresh trees in from the Pacific Northwest. So, barring any problems with Transportation Safety Administration or agricultural tie-ups, there could be several hundred trees en route to the islands in just a couple of days.

Gone are the trees at Richard Tajiri's Christmas tree lot at Ala Moana Center, but the customers keep coming.

"I just came from Don Quijote and they didn't have any, so that's why I stopped here. I remember passing by last week. They had a bunch of them," tree shopper Leila Carvelli said.

She wanted a real tree for her husband and their new baby this year. Carvelli said she is determined to find one.

One father waited until his daughter came home from college so they could pick a tree together.

"I was at Home Depot on Wednesday and I said, 'Will you have trees on next week?' And they said 'Yeah.' And then I called Friday and they said, 'We are all out of trees and we are not getting anymore.' And I said 'what?'" tree shopper Richard Sweet said.

One woman did not want to disappoint her little girl with a fake tree. She wanted to get the freshest one possible.

"If we get it too early they'll die. So this week, the week before Christmas, we thought it would be fine, but I guess not," tree shopper Burgundy Correia said.

Maui-born Tajiri, who has been shipping trees to Hawaii for years, is taking a gamble on trying to air freight more trees in. He has to get his trees trucked from Washington state down to Los Angeles. Tajiri said he expects to have 5- to 6-foot Douglas and noble fir trees for sale on Thursday.

Tajiri said he learned a good lesson during the last shortage when he watched a crowd get ugly on a tree vender who tried to fly in more trees, but was forced to charge a premium of up to $250 to recover his costs.

"We are not here to gouge people. We want people to have a tree," Tajiri said. "We are going to keep everything less than a $100."

However, even with the best intentions things can go wrong, including the chance that a shipment could get rejected because of bugs.

"That's another problem. So, my guy is trying to make sure everything is good over there. Hopefully we will be OK," Tajiri said.