Yesterday saw the inaugural flights of low-cost carrier Germanwings to and from Malta, as two planes, one from Cologne and the other from Stuttgart, landed at Malta International Airport.

Germanwings will be operating four flights a week, two from Cologne and two from Stuttgart, and plans to carry 13,000 visitors to Malta between now and the end of the year.

Germanwings is the third low-cost carrier to operate to and from Malta. Italian low-cost carrier Meridiana has been operating flights to and from Bologna since June, and is expected to carry another 6,000 visitors to Malta.

And Ryanair, which started operating in November last year, currently runs flights to Luton, Pisa and Dublin and is expected to carry 90,000 visitors to Malta.

In the meantime, Air Malta has recently announced an increase in the frequency of its flights to and from Munich, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and Berlin in Germany, and Birmingham and Stansted in the UK.

Tourism and Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech said the start of operations by Germanwings, coupled with more flights to and from Germany by Air Malta, would resolve the problems encountered last year. Dr Zammit Dimech said that German tourists had been unable to reach Malta because of a lack of flights. He made the point that Germany was the second largest market for Malta-bound tourism and said he believed that the increase in the number of flights would help further expand the market.