As from this November, Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air will commence its first-ever direct connection between Malta and Israel by launching direct flights to Tel Aviv International airport.
The news was described as a big win for the recuperation of Malta’s tourism sector which was badly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic travel restrictions in a press conference on Thursday.
In what was described as “more good news” for Malta’s tourism sector by Minister for Tourism and Consumer Protection, Clayton Bartolo, Malta Air’s 2021 winter schedule will embark on two additional bi-weekly direct flight routes, to and from Parma (Italy) and Lisbon (Portugal).
The Tel Aviv route will also run twice a week from November.
To celebrate the route launch, Malta Air is offering a €19.99 sale on flights up until March 2022 if booked within the next two days (ending 14th’August).
The Malta-Israel route has been described as especially invigorating for Malta’s tourism sector as in 2019 Malta recorded over 20,000 tourists from Tel Aviv and despite that figure dropping to around 3,000 during 2020 due to the pandemic, Minister Bartolo is confident that the tourism industry will be “moving forward from such unchartered waters.”
Since both Malta and Israel have a high vaccination rate among their populations, when choosing this flight route, travellers can feel more at ease that they are travelling between “safer” destinations and that moreover, on their flight to Malta they can be assured to only be travelling with other vaccinated tourists due to Malta’s current travel restrictions, said Malta Air CEO, David O’Brien.
Furthermore, not only will this boost the tourism sector but Malta’s business sector is also said to be positively affected seeing as it has been recorded that 20% of those travelling to Malta from Israel do so for business, noted Minister Bartolo.
These three new Ryanair routes are additional to the further 12 new direct Malta routes already launched over the past two weeks (Lourdes, Milan Malpensa, Zagreb, Bucharest, Kyiv, Eindhoven, Paphos, Tallinn and Warsaw Modlin), tallying a total of 62 direct Malta Air routes this winter which will continue to set the airline apart from its European competitors Lufthansa and Air France, which currently only fly two direct routes to Malta, remarked O’Brien.
Thanks to the brand-new Boeing 737-8200 “game changer” added to Malta Air’s fleet on July 27, − adding 4% more seats, use 16% less fuel per seat, lower CO2 emissions by a similar amount, and cut noise emissions by 40% − these new direct routes that can carry more passengers per flight will supplement Ryanair’s first place position as the “greenest and cleanest airline in Europe”, stated O’Brien.
Thus, from November, those travelling between Malta and Tel Aviv will benefit from a 3-hour flight when compared to Lufthansa’s current 8-hour stop over flight route through Germany costing over €200, concluded O’Brien.