After a few months of negotiations following the end of the helicopter service between Malta and Gozo in November, the government has recently reached a deal with a Spanish company, Helicopteros Del Sureste, for the service to be reintroduced.

This service, so needed between the two islands – especially for tourism purposes – will begin operating next month. The announcement of the deal was made, not surprisingly in Gozo, a few days ago.

On a number of days this winter, Gozo has been isolated when the sea was rough and the ferries between the two islands could not run. This meant that there could be no travel to and from Gozo. Tourists, Maltese and Gozitans were stranded, with some of the former losing their connection to other flights.

This led to serious accusations from the opposition, which contended that the government was not giving too much importance to the sister island, considering that the old service was stopped before a new company had agreed to operate a replacement.

The opposition took advantage of the fact that for some weeks, which will grow into months before the service is re-started, no air service has been available, causing inconvenience to those who want to travel by helicopter and damaging the tourism industry.

Now that the service is about to resume, the opposition is again criticising the government because it claims that the price of tickets for the helicopter trip is too expensive.

It must be admitted that the price is on the high side. The price for a two-way ticket for tourists is Lm50, while that for a one-way ride is Lm30. The Maltese and Gozitans will be travelling at a more reasonable charge of Lm26 (two-way) and Lm16 (one-way).

Of course, the company that will be operating the service wants to make a profit from it. Otherwise it would not have ventured into it in the first place.

But one gets the impression that the government had its hands tied on this one. On the one hand, it wanted the service to be resumed as quickly as possible, and not only because the opposition was criticising it for having failed to secure a new service before the old one ended. The government knows that Gozo’s tourism industry needs the service.

On the other hand, the fact that negotiations with other firms had failed before the Spanish company was chosen meant that it was perhaps felt that unless an agreement was reached with this particular organisation, summer would come and Gozo would still be without this service, which is so necessary in tourism terms.

Let’s face it, a tourist coming over to Malta would spend just a little bit more than Lm50 to book a trip – flight, accommodation and all – to nearby Tunisia. So a Lm50 charge on just a two-way 10-minute trip between Malta and Gozo and back is expensive.

In fact, the Malta Hotels and Restaurants, while welcoming the resumption of the service, has complained that the service cost has nearly doubled for tourists, questioning its sustainability.

Lm50 may mean little to the rich tourists who come over and want to avoid the hassle of having to be driven to Cirkewwa to catch the ferry, taking much more time to arrive at their destination, and having to do the reverse trip when they go back home. But how many of these rich tourists do we get these days?

We hope we are wrong. We hope that the service will be efficient and that many will be using it in order to make it viable.

We hope that the Spanish company will not pack up and leave when it realises that it does not have enough patrons and therefore, cannot operate at a profit. We hope that we will not be back to square one.

But we do have our doubts.