Airlines co-op

mooted

Apart from Pacific Forum Line matters, delegates attending the Sixteenth South Pacific Forum meeting in Rarotonga did not get the chance to discuss any matters of the recently com pleted Regional Transport Study.

This recommends the estab lishment of a regional equip ment pool - principally of air craft - which South Pacific flag carriers could lease for their own operations.

The study has also looked at the feasibility of rationalising some services, and it is prob ably that aspect of the reports, touching as it does on such matters as national image-buil ding, which adds to the com plexity of an already difficult issue.

The Regional Transport Study was circulated to Forum ministers of transport some months ago, but it is still official ly under wraps.

Many believe it is long over due because of the heightened interest on the part of island nations in extending runways, taking over airports and bring ing in more tourists from places like Australia, Japan and Hawaii.

The commercial operators, like Ansett Transport Industries of Australia, have already laid much groundwork for expan sion in the Pacific through link ages with Air Vanuatu, Polyne sian Airways, and with hotel ventures, actual or projected, in a variety of places.

The big question industry pundits believe the Pacific Is lands face is whether they want to join forces and do their own aviation thing by cooperation, or stand alone and get picked off one at a time by the bigger Pacific Rim-based airlines.

Cooperative regional airlines do not have a very good history around the world but, accor ding to some experts, it may be the best, or possibly the only viable, way for the small Pacific Islands to go.

Delaying consideration of the Regional Transport Study in full

and in public is seen as unlikely to help resolution of the issue.

Air Pacific, which might be seen as a key element in any regional cooperative, is now reporting an operating profit under Qan tas management, and the Cook Islands, now in control of its big Rarotonga airstrip, is now actively wooing more in ternationals to call at their door.

Prime minister Tofilau Eti Ale sana of Western Samoa wasted no time in putting the bite on the prime minister of New Zea land, David Lange, for help in extending the runway near Apia so that it could take Boeing 747 jumbos. Australian aid, and some other locally voted funds, have just gone into extending it to allow tri-engined Boeing 727 jets to take off.