Malta can be an amazing place to live in.

On some days one topic is all the rage and everybody, from papers to cafes, is speaking about it, but then, in just a matter of hours, it simply disappears from sight.

Air Malta is a case in point. All through last week, and days before that, all we kept hearing about was that its pilots were about to strike and how this strike may prove to be the deathblow to the airline.

Then come Saturday, when Malta International Airport had its heaviest day of the year, and when the Air Malta pilots work-to-rule was to begin ... and the rest was silence.

 We know that planes kept coming and going because we could see them and hear them. We also know that the airport was heaving with people. And anyway, Air Malta today is just one of the airlines that fly from Malta, by no means the only one.

Did the pilots work to rule? Silence from the normally voluble ALPA. Were there any delays and/or cancellations? Ditto silence.

There was an even greater silence on the other side - that of the negotiations between Air Malta and Alitalia/Etihad.  The end of the month is fast approaching and the deadline for an eventual agreement is on 31 August.

It would seem that the heads of agreement come first and only then will each component of the airline come to understand how will it change under the new agreement. This implies that each component will come under massive pressure to come in line, assuming that together all sectors, the government and all who are interested accept the deal as the best that can be done in the circumstances.

The short and hot summer when we discussed the Mriehel and Townsquare towers, the deckchairs in Comino, and similar subjects will soon be over when we start to discuss the real terms of the Air Malta package and when crucial and possibly painful decisions will have to be taken.

Every time we see an Air Malta plane coming in to land or taking off, we feel a tinge of anxiety - will this glorious airline, so linked to Malta's post-Independence history, go under? Will we never get the same feeling of pride when we see the colours of the airline, the eight-pointed cross, on some foreign land?

Perhaps an even greater fear is that when the deal is published, the component sectors in the airline will refuse to lose their acquired privileges and rights even when they know that by their refusal they are losing not just their own job but the very existence of the airline itself and with it an irreplaceable part of Malta.

There were other countries such as Hungary that lost their national airline and their tourism kept going. Even Italy, where Ryanair now flies more routes than Alitalia, has not seen its tourism decrease. Just yesterday Ryanair announced 44 new routes, 10 new planes and its commitment to invest €1,000 million.

So there's life after the national airline, But we would prefer our national airline to continue. It is, with its good and less good points, a very Maltese thing.