This final stretch of the long road that has been the bid to save the national airline, Air Malta, will prove to be the most difficult, and determining, so far.

Following this week’s publication of the European Commission’s 15-page report on the €130 million bid to bail out the national airline, an operation that has generated an aggregate operating loss of €116 million over the last six years alone, it has become evident that the painful job cuts from the airline’s swollen ranks were really the most obvious and fundamental starting point. And those measures alone are far from enough to keep the beleaguered airline afloat.

That measure as a standalone, which will see a staff reduction of 430 full time equivalents, is expected to save the airline between €9 and €11 million up to 2016 – still a long way from the overall process’ aim to increase revenue by €30 million and to decrease costs by the same amount. And as such, returning the airline to profitability by 2015 will be a very tall order indeed.

But while the road ahead is lined with potholes, the European Commission’s report has neither damned nor praised efforts or the restructuring plan itself - it has given the Commission’s appraisal of the lay of the land and it has invited feedback. This is, as the government pointed out yesterday, the formal investigation phase of the European Commission’s approval process.

The Commission has raised some difficult issues that show there are still a number of hurdles that will still need to be overcome on the road ahead.

One of these will be the 20.2 % capacity reduction the airline will be making in its routes structure so as to make compensation for having received state aid, and the Commission’s request for more information about route development up to 2014 as it feels the airline could simply be planning to rob Peter to pay Paul in this respect.

But the Commission has also questioned the realism of the “optimistic” forecasts on long-term viability and whether the state aid being proposed violates the ‘one-time, last time’ rules on state aid following a capital injection by the government on the eve of Malta’s EU accession, arguably just before such actions were to fall under the Commission’s microscope.

The government also pointed out how all recent airline restructuring processes went through the same process - Cyprus Airways in 2006, Alitalia in 2008, Austrian Airlines in 2009, the Hungarian national airline Malev in 2010 and Czech Airlines in 2011.

But while four of these airlines still exist, one very bad omen is the failed Malev operation, which was permanently grounded earlier this month, less than a month after the European Commission ordered the airline to pay back its own €130 million in state aid it had received.

The airline was grounded after 66 years of operations after Tel Aviv airport refused one of its aircraft take-off before payment of what was described as a “hefty sum”. The incident had set a precedent and the airline knew it would not have been able to foot similar bills and face similar situations, with the Hungarian government having been barred from providing more resources.

In fact, in its communication on Air Malta the Commission warned that “all unlawful aid may be recovered from the recipient”.

Just how Air Malta had come to these sorry crossroads is another story and judgement on that will be reserved for the future; the far more urgent matter at hand is the saving of the airline - from itself and from the politicians that have delved too deep into it in the past, misdeeds that will not be allowed to be repeated.

Much of the final verdict will also depend on the viability of the airline’s new business plan of becoming a hybrid airline – combining the best of the low-cost carrier and legacy airline styles, but, perhaps just as importantly, the Commission is also recognising many aspects of the very unique role that Air Malta plays for the country – from the crucial aspect of having appropriate air links given the country’s isolation and high degree of economic openness to the airline’s “vital” role in Malta’s economic and social cohesion through the daily transportation of freight, post and perishables to and from mainland Europe.

While it is a small player on a European level, the Commission points out that Air Malta is vitally important for Malta and the Maltese. It is also recognised as the principal carrier of Maltese patients who need treatment abroad, with the other alternative of having air ambulances being considered as prohibitively costly. Additionally, as Malta’s legacy airline, it is the only European airline that can link Malta to important non-EU destinations such as Libyan Tunisia and Egypt thanks to existing bilateral agreements.

All these considerations and many more will be under very careful scrutiny in the weeks to come in this final stretch which, it is hoped, will be the home stretch for Air Malta.