On 27 June 1990, the first flight of the Malta-Gozo Airlink took place. On 31 October 2004 at 10.30pm the last flight took place.

An Air Malta statement that day said that between 30,000 and 40,000 passengers had used the service every year of its operation. The peak was reached in 1994 when no less than 64,000 passengers had used the service.

Thus ended what was, at least for those years, a dream. Today, the Gozo Heliport near Ghajnsielem, inaugurated in all glory on 25 May 1996, is still there, forlornly closed.

No flights take place between the two islands, unless some touch and go episodes by microlights at the Ta' Xhajma racecourse, as I myself witnessed.

People are served by Gozo Channel but on the rare days when the service is suspended there is no link at all between the two islands. (To be fair, there were also rare days when the helicopter link could not operate due to severe storms)

As it is, there is simply no alternative to MIA and, were an accident to take place there, there is simply no alternative. The Armed Forces themselves do not have any alternative for them to use in an emergency.

As it is, people who need to move quickly still have to drive down to Mgarr, wait for the ferry, and then drive all the way down Malta when they can do the journey in a few minutes. That, I think, is the biggest disincentive for some people to move to Gozo.

The author has been ADC to the last Governor, Sir Maurice Dorman, and to two Presidents. However, his interest in aviation had been a life-long interest for him along with interest in the organizing of the International Air Rally of Malta. In those years, around 1967, the Malta-Gozo Air Services asked government to approve a project to build a 1.6km airport southeast of Xewkija. This project was approved both by the Gozo Civic Council and the PWD but nothing was done.

In November 1987, after the end of the 16-year Labour administration, Mr Kissaun was sent for by Gozo Minister Anton Tabone and asked for his opinion on a viable air-link between Gozo and Malta.

The specially-set up committee had quite a load on its hands. It had to select the site, the kind of helicopter to be used and the viability of the project. Even at that point, he was, as he would be till the very end, in favour of a fixed-wing solution rather than a helicopter service as he surmised, correctly as it turned out, it would be costlier, something like Lm15 per person on a fixed-wing aircraft as against Lm19 and over for the helicopter service.

Later the decision was reached to opt for a helicopter link and that Air Malta would operate the service. The service started in the last week of June 1990 with an Augusta Bell in service. Within two weeks, Air Malta was announcing it had reached a deal with a Bulgarian company to carry out the service using a different helicopter. While the first two weeks of the service had been carried out according to EU rules, Air Malta was actually trying to run before it could walk. There was a lot of criticism in Parliament regarding the new service and it is clear, Mr Kissaun says, that Air Malta had not done its homework properly. Anyway, four weeks should have been allowed to pass before any evaluation was carried out.

There had not been, so far, any consideration of the need for a subsidy.

That seems to have been the end of Mr Kissaun's direct involvement with the project.

The rest of the book is a collection of press cuttings as from that time onwards with Mr Kissaun's sometimes trenchant comments about what was written. We still do not know how and why his involvement was terminated and that could shed a revealing light on some of the comments he passed.

It is quite interesting, at this distance, to track the evolution of the airlink to its final death.

In August 1994 this paper reported that the service broke even in its second year of full-year operation and had doubled the fleet to two 22-seater helicopters. But still people complained ... about the noise.

It would seem that the debate about an airstrip originally came from the Armed Forces who were about to get their first fixed-wing plane. From a hypothetical airstrip this soon morphed in some people's minds to a proper airport offering passenger services. And all hell broke loose.

The widespread protests led the Armed Forces to abort their plans. Nevertheless, in 1996 the Planning Authority approved an extension of the landing area eventually lengthened to 174m. On 25 May 1996 the Gozo Heliport was officially inaugurated. A relay of helicopters took press and guests from Malta to Gozo for the inauguration. That was just a few months before the elections which brought Labour to power.

Fares were raised but after a few months Malta Air Charter began offering Gozo residents subsidized rates and there was talk about offering check-in facilities right from Gozo.

What killed off the service took place under the new PN administration. On 28 January 1999 MAC temporarily suspended its operations after a similar helicopter crashed into the sea in the Maldives. Then it surfaced that MAC was running at a loss. Flights were cancelled and keeping the schedule proved to be problematic.

Relying on press cuttings is not so reliable to try and understand what went wrong. However, the press cuttings indicate what may have gone wrong.

The airlink project may have been modest in its beginnings but its success bred speculation of an adventure of uncontrolled proportions. On the other hand, opposition kept coming up with the weirdest claims, such as that regarding the noise that a small aircraft engine would make.

MAC ceased its flights on Sunday 31 October 2004. A search was made for a substitute and a Spanish alternative was chosen - Helicopteros del Sureste - which began on 21 March with just one helicopter and with sky-high prices - €115 being the full fare with many ideas for development in the future. By the end of the year the new service had carried only 10,000 passengers where under MAC that figure would be in the region of 40,000. With that kind of patronage, a fixed-wing operation would be viable, but not a helicopter one.

Mr Kissaun ends his book just as he had begun it: in favour of a fixed wing airlink which only needs extending the present 174m runway to 500m. Over and above what is written in the book, there have been many more controversies and arguments on one side and the other but no resolution so far. As Mr Kissaun writes at the end, all it needs is political will, which continues to be missing. Every time an election comes by, politicians of all hues fly off and speculate from a road link to a tunnel. Then the election comes and nothing happens.

To conclude: Mr Kissaun sometimes mentions an author by name, and sometimes he does not. He reserves his deepest venom for one of our colleagues here and for I still cannot understand what was in that news item that aroused Mr Kissaun to boiling point.

 

George E Kissaun

My Life in Aviation - The Malta-Gozo airlink

Book Distributors Limited

2012

126pp