The redundancy process for 104 Air Malta pilots and 139 cabin crew members is still ongoing, but can be stopped if an agreement between the airline and the respective unions, Economy Minister Silvio Schembri said on Friday.

Fielding questions from journalists, Schembri said that talks between the airline and the unions – in this case the Airline Pilot’s Association (ALPA) and the Union of Cabin Crew (UCC) – had never actually stopped.

He said that Air Malta had always wanted everyone to pull one rope, however he implied that some people had entered discussions with the mentality that the situation was the same as it was before Covid-19 erupted.

Air Malta's pilots and cabin crew had resisted having their monthly salaries cut to €1,200 for the next three months while the airline's flights are almost completely grounded due to the measures put in place to stop the spread of the virus.

As a result, the airline opened procedures to sack four-fifths of its pilots and another 139 cabin crew members.

Schembri noted that now that the redundancy process with the Department of Industrial and Employment Relations (DIER) had begun, ALPA and the UCC had come back to the discussion with a different tone, meaning that discussions are continuing.

Schembri said that the discussions are not only centred on the short term, but on the company’s long-term future and the manner in which they will move forward from there.  He said that hard decisions had to be taken for the good of the company and the country as a whole.

He rejected the notion that Air Malta had done something of a u-turn on its previous stance, noting that the 30-day process for the redundancies with the DIER was still ongoing.  He said however that if an agreement is reached with everyone, then that process could be withdrawn.

“If we had no intention of safeguarding Air Malta’s future, the simplest thing for us was to not take any decisions and to let fate take its course as has happened with airlines abroad”, Schembri said.

He said that these decisions are being taken because they want to safeguard jobs and safeguard the airline as a whole.

Asked about the reported existence of agreement signed between ALPA and former Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi which guaranteed that pilots would be given alternative employment with the same take-home pay should they be made redundant, Schembri did not confirm nor deny the existence of such an agreement.

In reply, he simply said that the discussions are ongoing and should be allowed to mature before details are revealed.