Newsstand - Tonga closes national airline

For those of you unaware Tonga had its own airline, the answer can now be that they did:

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,9622310%255E1702,00.html

TONGA'S Government is closing its national airline after its financial collapse this week, halting all domestic air travel just before the main tourist season, New Zealand officials said today.

What were thinking leasing a Boeing 757? Are they nuts? They should have kept it simple and served their domestic market first with a nice Dash 8 and codeshared with Air Pacific and Air New Zealand.

Geez- give me a go and I'll run a nice little airline the country can be proud of - one that makes money $$$.

Royal Tongan Airlines traces its origins back to 1985, when the kingdom bought a small fleet of aircraft and opened air routes between some of the 169 islands that fall within Tonga's territory.

International services began the following year with direct flights to American Samoa, and were later extended to Sydney, Auckland, Honolulu and Los Angeles.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3734979.stm

Well, they were at least smarter than Air Nauru, a sideshow in the tragicomedy that is the recent history of that country, which The Economist in 2001 likened to "an enormous moth-eaten fedora":
The island, whose remoteness in the middle of the Pacific is impossible to exaggerate, makes an improbable air-travel hub. Yet the government backed Air Nauru, which for a while boasted a fleet of five 737s. (It is now down to one.) It did not help that former presidents used to commandeer the airline's planes for holidays, leaving paying customers stranded on the tarmac.... Several times this year, the Australian aviation authority, which regulates Air Nauru, grounded its one and only plane for fear of the frequent power and communications blackouts at Nauru's airport.