I can understand your points about the need to try and maintain these regional services and about the fact that governments do waste money supporting other unsustainable activities as an act of good faith.
From a business perspective however, I don't regard it as a sound practice to rely on governments to bail out companies just for the symbolic value of doing so.
Airnorth at some stage must have developed an aircraft, cost and route structure that they believed was profitable. They expected to make a lot of money on that centre run and not many people are taking up the offer. To me, that suggests that maybe a scale back in frequency is required.
Qantas instantly cuts flights into asia the second someone sneezes twice in a row for fear of SARS outbreaks. Why should it be that different? The federal government didn't rush to bail out Ansett when their corporate planners stuffed it up either. Governements cant be accountable for non reactive commercial business plans forever in my opinion.
That daily 146 service seems to do the job just fine, cant someone just accept that a turboprop service may not be essential all year round.
And....If you say that their flights are always full, and "only empty once in a couple years" why are they not making a lot of money out of their flight structures?