Maybe only a few have joined the dots.
The new Air Malta board of directors brings back components from Air Malta’s historical DNA.
Minister Konrad Mizzi is the son of a former high employee of the airline while board member and deputy chairman Ray Sladden is the former financial controller of the airline.
Both worked in the golden years of the airline under the late Albert Mizzi. Granted, the airline then was in a position of a monopoly of sorts.
Bringing back these core DNA members of the airline was a genial touch. One wonders why no one thought of this before.
There are still pilots from those days in the airline, as there must be cabin crew. And of course backroom staff, such as in accounts and marketing.
Over the past years, the airline tried flying solo but all but crashed. To bring back key components of the airline’s historical past means stopping the experiments which have almost crashed the airline and reverting to what the airline knows best – flying people to and from Malta.
The other members of the new board, starting from the new chairman Charles Mangion, and industrialist Joe Gasan, promise depth and expertise in the boardroom.
The task facing the new board is immense. Despite the massive cost-cutting and austerity decisions of the past years, the airline has not broken even, despite the many promises made.
One might argue the remedies applied in recent years have made the patient much worse. It is thus with a sense of relief, felt all over Malta but especially in the travel industry, that we learnt that the first decision of the new board was to reverse the absurd and ridiculous decision to stop flying to Frankfurt, one of the historical first routes of the airline.
The new board, in other words, did not shy from taking the bull by the horns.
It would also seem the new board has agreed with what many have been saying all along that it was a bad decision to cut down on the number of planes run by the airline and to stop from venturing to new routes and destinations. As one can see from the many low cost airlines that are coming to Malta, these do not shy from attempting new ventures.
The value of bringing back some key players from the past is that they incarnate what the airline used to mean both to its employees and to the people of Malta as a whole. That was the time when Malta was proud of Air Malta and seeing its logo in so many airports around Europe gave one a shot of national pride that cannot be forgotten.
Air Malta then set the standard and seeing it compete with huge foreign airlines meant that Malta could compete with the best.
Beyond the immediate steps that must be taken, this, we venture to suggest, is the most important task ahead – to give back to the airline the pride we used to feel about the airline and to make it once again the embodiment of what Malta is proud about.
The rest, technicalities apart, will follow.