A full year has passed since the introduction of low cost airlines to Malta and facts and figures have proved that far from being a threat to the established airlines, especially Air Malta, the introduction of low cost airlines has been accompanied by a surge of passengers for the scheduled airlines, including Air Malta.

Figures provided by Julian Jaeger, MIA’s new CEO, at a press briefing last Thursday, show that low cost airlines have taken up a 9.56 per cent market share of passengers flying to and from MIA, considerably up from the meagre 1.74 per cent in 2006 when low cost airlines were slowly allowed in for the last two months of the year.

Passengers using MIA were up 10.36 per cent last year, to 2.970 million, and they are expected to exceed 3.18 million this year.

With a total of 283,000 passengers using them, low cost carriers have seen an increase of 237,000. The legacy carriers, as the non-low cost airlines are called, have also seen an increase of 34,000 – a 5.3 per cent increase, whereas Air Malta itself saw an increase of 16,223, or one per cent, over the previous year, not counting the passengers carried by Air Malta on charter flights, which were numerous for the San Gorg Preca canonization in Rome and the many tours organised over the year.

With a total of 1.629 million passengers carried, Air Malta still has the lion’s share of passengers at MIA, a 54.8 per cent share, but Ryanair has rushed in to occupy the second place, with 222,000 passengers.

One can safely predict that the numbers carried by low cost airlines will continue to increase not only because some low cost airlines have just started flying to Malta, others still – Vuelling to Madrid, Norwegian to Oslo, Volareweb to Milan – have yet to start flying to Malta, while more airlines can be attracted to the 60 per cent reductions promised by MIA for underserved routes and the 40 per cent reductions offered for new routes.