On most days these Easter holidays, the rumble of planes taking off from the nearby airport is a constant during the day. And that’s not counting the landings.
After the dreadful silence of the Covid years, this is a welcome sound. It means people have again begun to travel to Malta.
A glance at the appropriate websites confirms this. One can today monitor and watch planes arriving and departing from MIA in real time, even to the extent of knowing where that plane that’s just left is heading.
What the websites don’t tell you is the inner and true story. Yes, there are many planes coming and going at MIA and these are good days for Malta’s tourism but these days are good days for the airlines operating out of Malta except for Malta’s national airline, Air Malta.
Over the past days Air Malta has been in the news for all the wrong reasons – a plane had to be taken off for maintenance and this produced a knock-on effect on many other flights, giving the airline a very bad name with passengers who do not appreciate having their after holidays disrupted.
That contributes to giving Malta (and not just the airline) a bad name. People in distress start noticing other things – the new front desk company with its many TCNs and very few Maltese employees to field questions. Maybe even the road disruption around the airport, though this is said to be drawing to a close.
The airport itself, which sat on its hands during the pandemic, is now beginning work on extending the runway with consequences on scheduled flights and on general aviation.
Many tourists still find their holiday resorts surrounded by construction work as many big hotels have chosen to pull down the properties or add storeys to them.
The cumulative impact is negative – dust, rubble, confusion. It’s a miracle tourists still come.
Considering all the above, there is very little that may be corrected in the short term. Until all the construction work on hotels is finished. Until all the roadworks are completed. Until the airport and the national airline get their acts together.
Having said that, there is much that can be done in the meantime. The mayhem, the carnage on the streets can and must be tackled. Proper procedures must replace the present ramshackle pieces of paper that get lost or become illegible even to the officer who takes them down. The law must come harder on those without proper insurance and people must be made to pay up the fines they owe, or face losing traffic rights.
I agree: this will not get planes to leave on time but at least we would be doing something to remove the stigma that Malta is a country where everything goes, where all is allowed.
There are many other destinations with sun and decent hotels, inside and outside Europe. With airlines that leave on time and that do not subject their passengers to abnormal delays that disrupt holidays right from the beginning. And many come with fly-times of less than four hours.
It is still possible for people to fall in love with Malta but it is equally possible for people to stop gushing about us and our country.
Really, it’s still up to us.
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