Air Malta said its aggressive advertising campaigns in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and other core markets were generating “exceptional results”, with sharp increases in traffic being registered in these last months, notably from the UK, Italian, French, German and Austrian routes.

Over the last four months from August until November this year Air Malta has increased its passengers on its UK routes by an average eight per cent every month over the same period last year. The Italian market has seen an average 18 per cent increase over the last seven months compared to 2006, while France has seen a 13 per cent increase in the last three months over the same period last year. The German market registered an average 10 per cent increase in passengers in the last five months over 2006.

Sales on Air Malta’s scheduled network for November 2007 alone have gone up by 11 per cent when compared to the same period last year. December bookings have already surpassed last year’s flown traffic and indications are that this month Air Malta will register around 14 per cent higher traffic over December 2006.

In the UK, Air Malta has recently launched a major advertising campaign – the Malta Break Escape. The campaign presented an unbeatable travel offer with prices starting from GBP69 return (including taxes and charges). Two television campaigns on Sky News for a total of 12 weeks were booked, including banner advertising on the popular Sky News portal. Extensive print media campaigns were carried on daily London and national papers that included full page colour adverts on The Times of London, board advertising in Goodison Park stadium of Everton Football Club, at the Anfield Road Stadium of Liverpool FC, in the Metro gazette distributed free of charge on the London Underground rail together with poster ads on London Underground trains. Air Malta together with the Malta Tourism Authority also hosted various UK based journalists to Malta to participate in the various activities held here during the last months, including the Middle Sea Race.

In Italy’s major cities of Milan, Bologna, Rome, and Catania, Air Malta’s campaigns included advertising on newspapers together with sms and mms messaging. In France advertising media used included newspapers, radio and adverts on the Metro gazette – the freely distributed newspaper on Paris’ underground trains. In Germany, Air Malta carried adverts in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich on radio and daily newspapers.

Last summer Air Malta also took the bold decision to increase seat capacity on core markets. On the German market it increased the number of seats by no less than 27 per cent and floated five per cent more seats on the UK market. On the Italian market Air Malta increased seats by 39 per cent. Capacity on the Rome route alone was increased by 52 per cent.

The code-share agreement signed with Lufthansa in November 2006 also continued to show very positive results last summer. Both carriers are offering three daily non-stop flights to the Frankfurt and Munich hubs with connectivity to all German regional airports and offline European, American and Asian airports. This code-share agreement has generated substantial new traffic into Malta with positive direct impact on the tourism industry.

As from last summer the code-share agreement, which initially was solely operative on the direct Malta – Frankfurt and Malta - Munich routes, has been extended to all German regional routes and on the non-stop daily services from Munich to the American airports of New York’s John F. Kennedy and Washington Dulles. All these developments have increased extensively the accessibility to the Maltese islands from major European and international airport hubs.