Air Malta pilots’ threat of further industrial action in the form of delaying flights and/or suspending services altogether are not only placing their own company and their own jobs at risk, but they are also placing their country’s economy and the livelihoods of thousands of their fellow citizens at risk in the process.

The government in the midst of negotiating a 49% purchase of Air Malta by Alitalia, and the threats come smack bang in the middle of summer – the tourism industry’s peak season.  As such, there are thousands of people relying on summer tourism revenue, which the pilots are placing in jeopardy even with talk of a strike.

The airline’s pilots, it seems, know very well how to choose their timing for maximum effect.  In fact, the last timed the airline’s pilots threatened similar industrial action was back in July 2011 – again, in the midst of the high season.  At the time it was common knowledge that the airline had eaten through the €52 million in emergency funding granted to Air Malta had been intended to keep the airline aloft for six months, and the airline was living solely off its summer cash flow.

As our sister Sunday newspaper’s last edition had highlighted, the further industrial action being contemplated by the Air Malta Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) – over and above the current no jackets and no caps directive - could cost the beleaguered airline as must as €575,000 a day.

In one of Air Malta’s risk scenarios, a full day’s strike by flight personnel on a very busy day, such as a Sunday in July, would cost the airline €574,414 – per day.  If such action were taken on two busy days – impacting its bottom line by over €1.1 million - it could very well deliver a fatal blow to the ailing airline.

Although not as dire a threat as a full day’s strike, other scenarios contemplated by Air Malta would at the very least deliver serious wounds to the company.  In another scenario, in which flight personnel refuse to operate a popular morning flight, Air Malta would be impacted by a cost estimate of €50,378.  In another more muted scenario in which flight personnel would delay one morning flight by two hours, the airline would suffer a monetary hit of €18,290 each time such action is taken.

In the meantime, ALPA and Air Malta’s management remain at loggerheads over the negotiation of a new collective agreement, talks which have been set back as the national airline continues to thrash out a takeover agreement with Alitalia that would see the Italian carrier become the Maltese carrier’s strategic partner.

But should the pilot’s industrial action go full scale, the financial ramifications for Air Malta could be catastrophic – coming as it would in the middle of the peak season and anyone irresponsible enough to be even contemplating a strike that would ground the national airline must also very seriously contemplate the effects of such an action.

The threat itself, let alone should that threat be realised, is highly irresponsible and no one should be allowed put a gun to the airline’s head and hold it to ransom.  The ramifications of a strike go far beyond the actual strike itself.  Any such uncertainty in the tourism market leads to cancelled bookings since once an airline strikes there can be no real guarantee of how long that strike might last or whether it could recur.

On Tuesday the courts provisionally upheld an injunction filed against ALPA by Air Malta to stop the pilots union from seeing through on their threats to increase the level of their industrial action.  The courts will next week hear the airline’s argumentation for the injunction on Friday, after a meeting between the airline and its pilots union scheduled for Monday.

It is sincerely hoped that both reason and, above all else the national interest, will prevail on both dates but as matters stand nothing should be discounted.