attempted to run continue to come our way. Indeed, so many clippings are coming our way that we began to wonder if the PLP might think there was an international conspiracy against Mr. David Allen. The PLP's Shadow Minister for Tourism has persisted in suggestions for a local airline. Clearly the clippings are genuine and the Bermuda Government has not conspired internationally to destroy small airlines. We make that clear because the PLP's allies in the BIU accused Bermuda's Government of creating a major recession because it was down on Bermuda's workers! The latest clipping comes from The Economist of July 18 and is headed "Jet lag''. This deals with small Pacific Ocean airlines whereas most of those we have dealt with before have been in our own general area. The lead sentence in the piece from The Economist says, "The island states of the Pacific are finding that running an airline is a costly pleasure...Air Caledonie, the latest to disclose its problems, is expected to lose $7 million this year and is begging the government of New Caledonia, a French colony, for $3m to help it out. This may not sound much to the big operators, but in the Pacific a few million is a lot of money.'' A few million is a lot of money in Bermuda too, especially in these hard times. Maybe Bermuda should be giving thanks for a Government which had the sense not to jump for glory and soak the people to pay for an airline to fly the flag. Where would Bermuda be right now if it had to find millions to meet losses incurred by "Air Bermuda'' because the PLP's Mr. David Allen thought we should have our own airline? The article in The Economist writes about what it calls "the dogfight in the Pacific skies'' and says that the fight looks like continuing. The writer deals with a number of small airlines operated by small countries . It says that Pacific Air, which is basically owned by Fiji, lost $35 million by the mid-1980s and was bailed out by the Australian airline Qantas.

Western Samoa invested in a Boeing 737-200 but did not keep up its payments and the aircraft was repossessed. Vanuatu lost a deposit of more than a million dollars on a used airliner that was never delivered. Tonga also lost money trying to buy a jet aircraft. The Solomon Islands experience was less dismal. It lost $5.5 million in 1990 and broke even in 1991 and hopes to make $2 million in 1992.

When all of this is looked at together with the heavy losses and big problems for small airlines in our area, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and Trinidad, the overall picture is dismal.

We keep returning to this subject because Mr. Allen has returned to it time and again over the years and has refused to alter his advocacy of a local airline no matter how often the dangers have been pointed out. It is tempting for people to wonder or even to believe that a local airline might be a help to tourism in hard times but the truth is that Bermuda, right now, would be in the mess other small countries are in and would probably be disbanding a local recession hit airline, or paying millions of dollars in subsidies or borrowing to meet huge losses. The cash would have to come out of your pockets. We are fortunate because our Government was not so silly.

We hope that Bermuda will finally decide that flying the flag is fine but flying airlines is not.