In a way, this is an object lesson in how a politician should not be given – or be allowed to take – an executive role in a business venture.
Konrad Mizzi was given Air Malta to run after he was moved from his previous post as Minister responsible for Energy Generation. Typically, he took on his new responsibility with verve and élan because, whatever his faults, he generates enthusiasm around him and goes for the wider picture.
He took over an airline that was nearly at death’s door, with a reduced fleet and was cutting off what were described as non-core business. The mood inside the company – and I know this for a fact – was grim and depressing.
Enter Konrad Mizzi and he began by increasing the fleet, getting new and more efficient planes, opening up new routes and reinforcing existing ones.
I do not know the economic impact of these decisions, because the airline has still not published the accounts. All we were told was it had come nearer to breaking even. But there were never any figures. For all we know, Mizzi’s successor may be faced with an even grimmer picture.
Nor do we know, for instance, how the new routes are faring. The one Air Malta flight I took, to Munich and back – a strong, traditional route – was fairly full. But other routes, especially in new areas, may have faced a lack of customers because it takes years to build up a new destination.
There was trouble with the pilots and threats of a strike but talks managed to patch things up, and the airline faced a number of other issues, from delays, to some mix-ups. But all airlines seem to suffer from these problems.
For all its talk about being a low-cost, scheduled service and its offers of cheap flights, I still feel Air Malta’s rates are generally higher than other available low-cost flights. And, according to an international website that lists the most inefficient airlines, Air Malta is among the worst 20 and – as I know personally – it takes ages for it to reply to complaints and/or issue refunds.
Konrad Mizzi, I feel, did not come this way. All he would talk about were grand plans to get an intercontinental plane to connect Malta to New York, Beijing, Mumbai, etc.
Now he is gone and his successor must somehow continue playing the same tune. There was simply no time for Konrad Mizzi to face the impact of his decisions and experiments on the airline’s profit and loss sheet over the past months and so be able to see whether his actions were in the right direction or otherwise.
This is, as anyone can see, not something that one would meet in the private sector. It is only a dirigiste administration that would allow a Minister to take over a private venture and then remove him for reasons that have nothing to do with his management of the business.
Konrad Mizzi came to the airline from a personal background: his father worked for many years in the top echelons of the company and young Konrad would have grown up amid talk about the airline in a different historical context, an airline in a monopoly situation and managed by Bertu Mizzi, a giant in the airline’s history.
He was surrounded by people from the Mizzi past both on the board and in the management team. But now Konrad Mizzi is out. His vision can be carried on by his team, but I am afraid the impetus will not be there.
Besides, as a politician Konrad Mizzi could get the government’s support at any time. I doubt if his successor has the same clout.
Obviously, the new Minister, Silvio Schembri, must be allowed to manage things as he deems fit. There is, however, a small change that can be significant: Air Malta has been taken from the Tourism Ministry and given to the Ministry for Industry. When it was given to the Tourism Ministry, the government had praised the decision as being one that made sense. Now that it has been reversed, I just don’t know. Was it Chris Cardona who refused to have it on his plate, or Konrad Mizzi who wanted it above anything else, or Julia Farrugia Portelli who refused to take it on or Silvio Schembri who wanted it as well?
The national airline is too important for Malta to be allowed to go bust. Over the past years, under different administrations, it has been close to that point many times, risking sanctions from Brussels or actions by creditors. It suffered from a schizophrenic administration – cutting down at one time and then growing again. We, the taxpayers, never got to see the accounts, so we do not know what we are talking about. But the government, or rather the governments, know. Somehow, I feel, that – notwithstanding the public statements – they know what we do not know and they do not seem about to tell us.
The airline has been a sacrificial animal, to be experimented upon at will, whether that is buying planes that were not fit for service, taking up new and untested routes or succumbing to austerity and then going for helter-skelter expansion.
The employees, from pilots down, are buffeted with these continual changes and humour the bosses. That is the Socialist method of running a company and a country. The alternative – handing it to people from the private sector – did not seem to work. So what’s new? Look at Alitalia and compare notes.
The Maltese airline has historically suffered from too big a burden as the national airline – it even used to give any MP free tickets to everywhere. It took sick people to foreign hospitals. All that and more is well and good, as long as the costs are covered, but something tells me they are not.
Other airlines have told us n recent months that the writing is on the wall, especially when it comes to small and limited airlines. Air Malta, monopoly or not, has come through the test of so many years. Here’s wishing it many more.
[email protected]