“The Malta Tourism Authority is in discussions with Ryanair (which seeks to make Malta as its base) and at this stage, it would be premature to make any further comments,” said a spokesman for the Parliamentary Secretariat for Tourism, yesterday.

Thus, the long drawn out saga of Ryanair seeking to make Malta a base has now taken a different turn as the ministry is discussing prospects with the airline while it had previously been reluctant to make arrangements and accommodate it.

Nevertheless, the Malta International Airport still maintains it stance that costs and fees are comparable to other European airports. Asked whether it had entered new discussions with the airline, MIA was non-committal explaining that MTA could more aptly answer the question.

Back in May, the low cost airline Ryanair was offering Malta a base for its planes.

With just two planes housed here, this could increase the present 11 routes served by the airline to 23, bring in a total of 1.1 million passengers a year, equivalent to 1,100 new jobs and e273 million spent, Ryanair had said.

The airline started flying to Malta in 2006 and was bringing 545,000 passengers every year, spending e136 million in the Maltese economy. While MTA and the Malta International airport seem to have missed the boat for the coming season since the autumn-winter schedule has probably long been concluded, travellers could be facing new prospects for the next spring and summer seasons.

Given the current decline in tourist figures, it is clear Ryanair’s offer must be very attractive to the government and possibly a solution to its burdensome demands could ease stress off the tourism industry.

Ryanair was insisting that MIA costs were too high and it wanted a substantial discount, accessible to all airlines, according to the volume of passengers carried. On the other hand, it felt that where no growth was registered, there should be no support forthcoming.

Besides operating on routes which were already catered for by Air Malta, Ryanair was promising to open routes to the North African coastline including Tunisia. A Ryanair base in Malta could easily be structured to enable other possible targets including the Balkans, Turkey, East Europe and Israel.

Ryanair had the greatest growth last year in all Europe, adding nine million passengers to a total of 67 million passengers, served by 800 routes and 32 bases.