I had a similar occurrence to what Joseph Calleja (TMID, 6 August) described when I was taken suddenly ill and could not travel on an online-booked Air Malta flight last December. In my case, Air Malta did not even consider a refund, and when it came to the refund of taxes, I had to chase them for weeks.

Many times my emails were simply ignored or I would phone and get a lame excuse that the person handling my case was transferred to another department. The saga ended after several weeks when I was informed that I would be refunded taxes but out of the total amount, e50 were deducted – e25 for the ticket going to my destination and e25 for the return ticket. Air Malta described this as a “handling fee”. In the end I got very bad customer service and practically nothing refunded.

Yes, I totally agree that customer care at Air Malta is very poor.

Patrick Pace

Zejtun