(CNN) — Almost 200 years ago a British warship transported Napoleon Bonaparte to his exile on the island of St. Helena, a place from where it would be impossible for him to escape ever again.
Today, Bonaparte would probably find it almost as tough to escape from the tiny volcanic island located right in the middle of the South Atlantic.
The island is one of a string of remote British possessions scattered across the hostile seas that lie between Africa and South America, the remains of a once mighty empire.
It's no exaggeration to say that reaching St. Helena from Europe takes pretty much as long as in Napoleon's time.
While St. Helena was once a port of call for sailing ships plying the route around the Cape between Europe and Asia, the Suez Canal and maritime advances have left it redundant.
Until last year, the only regular link to the outside world was RMS St. Helena, the mail ship that, every three weeks, covers the five-and-a-half day journey from Cape Town, South Africa.
After a rocky start, that's set to change -- a scheduled commercial air service linking St. Helena to Johannesburg is due to start later this month.
A year of setbacks
In 2016, with much fanfare, St. Helena prepared to inaugurate its first ever airport -- but then an unexpected obstacle got in the way: the South Atlantic winds.
South African airline Comair, a British Airways franchise, planned to start flights to the island in May 2016 using a Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
However, a serious wind shear issue was detected as soon as the airliner attempted to land.
The wind shear only affects aircraft when landing from the north, but if the aircraft approaches from the south, there's a problem with tailwinds.
Prevailing tailwinds mean that aircraft need a longer runway to land with a full load.
Smaller aircraft can still land, and a number of them have done so -- for medical evacuation missions, for example. However, size and weight limitations render the route uneconomic for most airlines.
Atlantic Star Airlines, a start-up founded by former British Airways pilots with the purpose of linking St. Helena to the UK, advocated the use of Avro RJ100 aircraft, a now-aging model that nevertheless has the capability to land on very short runways.
To demonstrate, last year Atlantic Star Airlines arranged for a former SWISS Avro RJ100 to make a stopover at Saint Helena while on a ferry flight from Zurich to Chile. Although the landing was successful, the Avro option has fallen to the wayside.
Embraer, the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer, also threw in its two cents. It flew one of its Embraer E190 jets, an airliner with capacity for nearly 100 passengers, from Fortaleza, Brazil direct to St. Helena.
As well as demonstrating the capabilities of this aircraft type and its suitability for operations in the island, the Brazilian firm's publicity stunt left us with stunning footage of St.Helena's natural beauty.
It's actually an Embraer E190 airliner that will finally take up the task of...
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