The Airline Pilots Association today expressed concerns about Air Malta’s fleet renewal plan and insisted it was not consulted.

Referring to Air Malta’s recent press statement, ALPA said it was  disappointed that such plans were never discussed, nor divulged, with any employee representatives, including ALPA-Malta. “Unfortunately, while Air Malta presented its plans and so called "workings" to third parties, it failed to do the same to its own employees and their representatives. Needless to say, this is of concern to all Air Malta employees.

While ALPA-Malta agrees with finding possible ways of reducing costs through higher aircraft utilisation, we were never shown how this will be achieved and as such ALPA is concerned whether the whole plan is even doable.

Air Malta implied that a reduction in the number of aircraft will not result in a reduction of capacity or routes. This would have inevitably required an in-depth analysis of the current and future route structure. As an example, operating with a reduced number of aircraft while keeping the current route structure will obviously require a change in scheduled flight times. Were factors such as current airport slot times as well as airport operating hours restrictions taken into consideration? To date no such analysis was presented to ALPA-Malta, which is why we are highly concerned whether the plan is achievable. It also worrying that, after years of restructuring plans and management changes, including the employment of various foreign consultants, the best plan Air Malta could come up with is a reduction in fleet numbers; a plan which was already on the table way back in 2010 and a plan which was immediately shot down by most stakeholders involved.”