Monday’s press conference by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance on the end of Air Malta aimed mainly to mask the refusal by the EU to allow further State aid, the substantial downsizing of the airline and the birth of the new smaller airline. Hence the insistence on “seamless”.
Like a boy shrugging off a walloping by his father or, in other times, by the teacher and boasting he didn’t feel anything.
Instead, the EU decision closed the chapter on a long history of clientelism, debts and connivance with the government of the time. The sorry history of Air Malta is the sorry history of Malta’s economic failure as we, the citizens, assist impotently at a public debt that keeps going up.
Air Malta has thankfully survived all through these 50 years with no mishaps, thanks to its pilots and mechanical backup, but otherwise it has always been a byword for free seats for those who knew someone. I don’t know about tickets at reduced prices for block bookings but I do know of people who are still owed a refund dating back to Covid times.
I would have expected Monday’s press conference to begin by releasing the full and final accounts of the past years but I suspect we may never get them and so we will never get to know the falsehood of Konrad Mizzi’s boast that the airline had made a profit.
When this government came to power in 2013, it found a restructuring agreement laboriously cobbled together by the Nationalist administration, based mainly on a reduced labour force. Instead, right from the beginning and especially when elections came around, people were hurriedly recruited, often with no training or just basic training.
The Air Malta business model was based on its monopoly in its early years and also on Bertu Mizzi’s acumen. But now the times of a monopoly are over and Bertie is unfortunately not here.
When the airline was restructured in 2012, it did not adapt a new business model. I remember going to interview the then chairman at the new empty offices at Skyparks. It was eerie, a virtual airline.
But other airlines made the transition – Air Baltic, for instance with its pleasant graphics and innovative offers, Wizz Air, and others. It is however true that the 2008 economic crisis, followed by the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine killed off many small airlines or forced them to merge with bigger ones.
Previously an attempt was made to get Air Malta to be taken up by Alitalia but it came to nothing, also because this Italian airline had its own troubles. Now the government seems to have decided to keep Air Malta or what comes after it Maltese. The most it seems it may do is to open its shares to some private sector enterprise. We will see what will happen, though we are understandably quite sceptical given this government’s track record in choosing allies.
People are not taken in by the hype of “seamless”. Writing on the Corriera della Sera, Leonard Berberi claimed that the Commission had been more lenient with Air Malta than it was with Alitalia.
The Maltese Prime Minister spoke about an agreement reached with Antitrust EU whereas Antitrust sources told the Corriere an agreement had not been reached yet.
From nine planes Air Malta will go down to eight whereas Antitrust then under Margarethe Vestager had forced Ita Airways to take off with 52 planes, half of what Alitalia had.
More, the new Maltese carrier will have 375 employees just like Air Malta has. Whereas Ita began with 2,800 employees against the 10,000 that Alitalia had.
But the main issue will remain that the new Maltese airline will still remain state-owned and we all know what happens when the state gets its grubby fingers on anything – clientelism, favouritism and no respect for economic rules. The state has no role in running airlines and should get out and let private enterprises do it. Air Malta actually killed off a private sector venture still in its initial stages.
The new airline will be a downsized, small airline and good luck to it but with such parents the prognosis cannot be optimistic.
A second Maltese at the top of the world
We have now grown used to see Roberta Metsola presiding over the European Parliament. Now there is a second Maltese at the top of the world.
Not many will have watched on Wednesday the opening of the bishops’ synod at the Vatican even though it was broadcast live both the Mass in the morning in St Peter’s Square and the first session in the afternoon in the vast Paul VI Hall with the members grouped around tables like for some coffee morning.
Those who might have followed the afternoon session would have seen Cardinal Mario Grech sitting next to the Pope at the top table and also make one of the main speeches of the session.
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