Two great historic failures were the quests by alchemists to devise elixirs for turning base metals into gold or silver and for conferring eternal life and youth on the drinker. For the Pacific Islands, an equally hopeless quest has been to devise a formula for a regional airline able to run at a profit and please all its owners and passengers by meeting all their various requirements.

This concept has been much studied and debated. Back in the 1960s, it was even actually attempted when Air Pacific, Fiji’s national carrier, was briefly adopted by several other islands governments as their designated national carrier also.

Last month, the concept appeared to be finally buried when David Barber, an Australian aid official, conceded at a meeting of the Association of South Pacific Airlines (ASPA) that to replace about a dozen regional or sub-regional airlines with just one wasn’t feasible, either politically or economically, because of certain insurmountable obstacles.

Barber attended the meeting to talk about the findings of an Australian regional air and sea, but mainly air transport study for the Pacific Islands Forum. It was received by ASPA’s airline members with considerable “told you so” scepticism.

Earlier in the year, the Australian treasurer, Peter Costello, told the Forum Economic Ministers’ Meeting (FEMM) that a single regional airline was definitely what was needed in place of a lot of small one-horse outfits mostly costing their island government owners unsustainable heaps of losses.

The Forum shipping line is viable. Why isn’t an Air Forum feasible? Because the countries that would be part of it have too many conflicting needs and interests. ASPA’s airlines accepted that long ago but also accepted that while they need to compete in some areas, there are others in which they can cut costs through co-operation.

Co-operation is helping but is not a panacea for avoiding losses or profits so small that they amount to losses. As the debacles that Air Kiribati and Royal Tongan Airlines suffered in 2004 with aircraft leased for services doomed to fail financially from the outset illustrate some regional airline management decisions remain driven by political and nationalist influences and ambitions that national budgets can’t cope with.

ASPA’s attempts to devise cost saving solutions for its nearly indigent members have produced two innovations now copied worldwide. They are code-sharing (two or more airlines sharing one airline’s aircraft) and the joint leasing of an aircraft by two carriers (a jet with Air Pacific’s colours on one side and Royal Tongan’s on the other).

Other strategies are saving a dollar here and a dollar there for airlines glad to save a dollar. Now ASPA is working on something to gladden the hearts of all the Pacific islands’ hoppers. This is to as far as possible jiggle all the service schedules of its members so that travellers can transfer from one aircraft to another as quickly as possible without long hours, or days, of transit time. Technically, this is not an easy matter to arrange and ideally calls for the use of aircraft types on some routes the workhorse Boeing 737 jet is not suited for. ASPA favours the introduction of smallish 60-70 seat regional jets, but these are too costly for Pacific aviation circumstances. Something like the Dash-8, a 35-40-seater prop-jet is the second choice and would release the Boeing 737s for work on routes they can more profitably fly on.

ASPA members are evolving into a lose regional conglomerate that in the foreseeable future appears to be the closest thing to the unattainable Pacific travellers can hope for.