The winter sale hit the country like a bolt from the blue and it seems to have been highly successful (see page 7).

Ever since Air Malta issued its “Spread your arms and fly” programme, offering 33 destinations for Lm15 one way, it has sold seats like hot cakes. 55,000 seats sold in a matter of days is no joke!

But it could also mean there is a downside to this.

The seat sale came suspiciously very near to the government’s announcement that Ryanair has accepted to fly low cost flights to Malta from Luton UK, Pisa and Dublin as from February. It was interpreted by many in the field as ‘Air Malta’s knee-jerk reaction’ to the low cost announcement, or Air Malta’s sudden conversion to low cost flights.

Now, it seems it has also attracted, as many predicted of the low cost flights, more Maltese outbound tourists than incoming ones.

That is, at least, one interpretation of the rather ambiguous announcement by MHRA, which stated that in the past days it has learnt that the airline issued a stop sale notice to tour operators for 39 flights from various UK airports for November and December.

If this is true, said GRTU’s Philip Fenech, this could only mean that while more Maltese tourists will be flying out, less foreign tourists will be coming in, hence more problems for the already beleaguered tourism sector.

Equally worrying was the other announcement by MHRA, uncorroborated by the airline itself or the government, that the other low cost giant EasyJet has pulled out its plans to come to Malta. This is a blow the government must find a solution to so that we do not lose EasyJet’s presence in Malta, Mr Fenech said.