Air Malta bid farewell to its last Boeing aircraft in its fleet last Sunday. The departure of the Boeing 737-300 jet, 9H-ADI, which operated its last commercial flight KM3326/7 to Frankfurt, was marked with a “triumphal arc” of water from two vehicles of MIA’s Firefighting Section parked on either side of the taxiway.

It was an emotional departure, especially to the hundreds of Air Malta employees who throughout the years have worked on the airline’s Boeing fleet in a variety of jobs, from engineers, cabin crew, technicians, pilots, baggage handlers, dispatchers and others.

Air Malta has been operating with Boeing fleets for 34 years since its first flight on 1 April, 1974. The first Air Malta flight was operated with a Boeing B720-040B leased from Pakistan International Airlines with a capacity of 148 seats. The airline bought its first three Boeing 737-200 on its 10th anniversary on 30 March, 1983. Since then it has operated with over 60 Boeing aircraft of various types including the 707, 727-100/200 and the Boeing 737 series.

Throughout the years, the Boeings transported over 15 million passengers for Air Malta, including Pope John Paul II (twice, on 27 May, 1990 and on 9 May, 2001) and pop artist Madonna.

Air Malta milestones achieved with the Boeing fleet include the world record of the highest utilisation of the aircraft type presented by the Boeing Company in October 1983. That year, in September 1983, Air Malta achieved the highest worldwide utilisation of the Boeing 737 aircraft type with a utilisation record of 14.9 hours per day. Other milestones included the flight with a Boeing 737 on 8 March, 1997 (International Women’s Day) captained by Marthese Desira, Air Malta’s first female captain with an all female crew.

Another landmark flight operated by a Boeing aircraft was the flight on 5 January, 2005 to Colombo in Sri Lanka. This flight transported tons of medicines and other life-saving medical supplies that were urgently needed by the victims of the tsunami disaster and were donated by the Maltese government and the Malta Civil Protection. The flight, which Air Malta operated at its own cost, presented a navigational and operational challenge, taking 13 hours and stopping over in Cairo, and Dubai before arriving in Colombo after flying a distance of over 7,300km.

The decision to replace the airline fleet was not an easy one, a company statement said. At the start of the millennium, Air Malta saw the need of a younger fleet to lower maintenance costs and downtimes and the post 11 September 2001 aviation crisis provided the negotiating team, setup to evaluate fleet replacement proposals, a unique opportunity to obtain huge concessions.

In July 2002, Air Malta announced that after months of intensive negotiations and evaluations the airline concluded a multi-million dollar agreement which involved International Lease Finance Corporation, Airbus Industrie and CFM International for the renewal of its fleet over a four-and-a-half-year period. Two major elements of the deal involved the sale and lease back from ILFC, a major American aircraft lessor, of Air Malta’s own two A320-200s and three B737-300s, and the lease of 12 new aircraft from the Airbus A320 family for a term of 12 years each.

The delivery of new state-of-the-art Airbus, which started in January 2004 and concluded in March 2007, has presented Air Malta with substantial operational and technological advantages that include better cabin layouts, in-flight entertainment and substantial cost savings arising from fleet commonality.

Substantial savings were also registered in crew certification and recurrent training, reduced aircraft and engine spares inventories and better economies of scale in the production departments.

The new fleet registered superior performance achieving a better fuel burn ratio and has presented Air Malta with a more environmentally responsible aircraft fleet with less CO2 emissions and noise footprints.