Twelve Air Malta flights were delayed by times ranging from 15 minutes to five hours and 30 minutes yesterday as a consequence of a technical fault that developed in one of the national airline’s aircraft on Saturday night.

Air Malta said that flight KM 560 returned shortly after departing from Malta to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport following a technical fault which the aircraft developed with one of its hydraulic systems.

As a result, the journey, which was delayed by five hours and left Malta at 3am yesterday, was operated using another of Air Malta’s aircraft.

Air Malta said that the plane landed normally and was inspected by Air Malta engineers, who looked to make sure that the aircraft was safe enough to resume its flights.

As a consequence, however, the technical fault affected 12 other flights yesterday - two which headed to the Paris-Orly airport, and 10 others flying to Munich, Stuttgart, Zurich, Milan (Malpensa), Vienna, London (Gatwick), Catania, Marseille, Brussels and Amsterdam.

The first flight to Paris-Orly airport was the worst affected from the lot. The flight was supposed to have departed at 1.30pm, but was delayed for five hours 30 minutes.

The national airline apologised for the delays which it said were “caused by circumstances beyond its control” and outlined that “safety is the number one priority at Air Malta”.