According to news reports published last week, Air Malta’s designate chief executive officer has reportedly bailed out from the national airline before even being officially engaged for the job, as the saga of restructuring the airline continues to follow new twists and turns. Had the consequences of this whole affair not been quasi-tragic for the country and the hundreds of employees who will be affected, Air Malta’s proposed restructuring plan could possibly be billed as the perfect comedy of errors, which the country could very well do without.

A case in point is the statement issued last week by the Finance Ministry, which ‘revealed’ that the foreign consultants made fundamental mistakes in their proposed restructuring plan and have been requested to make ‘fundamental’ changes. Irrespective of the government’s statements issued to counter-claim the claims made by the Labour Party and the General Workers Union, the truth is that the country has lost faith in these foreign consultants engaged to supposedly draft a restructuring plan to save Air Malta.

Faced with the facts of the case, through the bits and pieces of information that made it into the public domain, it has become clear that Air Malta is at a crossroads, after having incurred significant financial losses over the past decade, and unless it is supported by the state the airline will not be able to continue operating. Since European Union laws do not allow such financial assistance, the airline has to be restructured to operate profitably as a proper company.

Faced with these decisions, the government opted to appoint foreign consultants, who have been hailed as experts in the aviation sector, to draft a restructuring plan designed to save Air Malta and place the national airline on a sound financial footing through profitable operations. The fact that the government requested fundamental changes and the designate chief executive officer decided to abandon the airline without even waiting for the restructuring plan to be finalised indicates that a fundamental problem exists, and that problem has to be resolved for the airline to have a future.

Without going into the merits of the damning statements made last week by the Labour Party, the General Workers Union and the Association of Airline Pilots, the blunders being committed and the flawed plan proposed by Ernst and Young seem to portray a situation where remedial action is required without any further delay. The veil of secrecy which the government has draped over the restructuring process to shield the negotiations from public scrutiny is, at best, a pathetic attempt at masking the blunders which are occurring.

The government has the political responsibility of safeguarding the country’s assets in the best way possible and administering the finances of the country in a judicious manner. Thus the authorities responsible for Air Malta should take the bold decision of perhaps substituting the foreign consultants, considering the deadline which the European Commission has set for the restructuring plan to be approved.

It is worth noting that the restructuring plan should have been submitted to the European Commission by 2 January 2011 for an effective decision to be communicated by May. Unfortunately, the urgency to save the national airline seems to have evaporated into thin air, with the plan back to the drawing board to implement the fundamental changes requested and more than two months behind schedule.