Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1443447
5 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 9 JANUARY 2022 OPINION WHEN finance minister Clyde Caruana presented all that 'bad news' and pretty much everything we already knew about Air Malta, we were more surprised with his frankness and his dispassionate dissection of the national airline, than with the data that confirmed our worst fears. Technocrat Caruana, who will stand on the 2nd and 8th districts as a Labour candidate after being co-opted to par- liament, sounded more like a financial consultant inform- ing government of the present woes of an ailing company, than some electorally-minded min- ister gatekeeping the bad news from the Abela administration. A former chief of staff to Ab- ela, Caruana spoke of all the f***-ups that had taken place in the preceding years, and had no qualms about pointing his fingers at former Labour minis- ters (without mentioning their names). He boastfully made it known that this was his plan and that he was going to imple- ment it no matter what. He also qualified that failure to do so would mean the end of Air Malta. His blunt approach was ap- plauded by many inside the diverse newsrooms who have watched and carried stories about the Air Malta crisis over the last 20 years. Caruana is of course in pole position to make all the neces- sary changes, which primarily includes halving the workforce to just over 400 from 800, and in changing work practices. The job of reducing pilot numbers was carried out before, at the height of the COVID crisis, yet he had no words of praise for his former colleagues. On the con- trary, he castigated the political class for treating Air Malta as a milking cow for their political needs. Caruana is of course a deter- mined politician, and he is ad- vantaged in his role as the great reformer of Air Malta by the simple fact that he never had to fight to seek election. He doesn't appear to have problems facing angry constituents who beg for jobs or to retain jobs at Air Mal- ta, it seems. Caruana may have been co-opted to the House, but he displays a political zeal that is embraced and rejected by many in equal measure. He is at the centre of all the pressure from the European Commission on how much state aid can be forked out by the Abela gov- ernment for the national air- line. His arguments for radical downsizing are bolstered by the current economic crisis that looms over the aviation indus- try and Malta. His presentation, aided by Air Malta's CEO David Curmi, made great sense, showing a loss of €300 million euros over 16 years; but his brazen analy- sis of political decisions and his comments about his colleagues ruffled many feathers. Mile End, home to Labour's insiders, were shocked by his frankness, and Labour's parlia- mentary group was surprised by the timing and tone at the press conference – just months be- fore a general election. Still, Caruana's Air Malta rev- olution appears to be the only way forward for a legacy airline which the country cannot do without, especially if we are to continue serving Malta's tour- ism and cargo demands over the next few years. And there are of course many reasons that has led to this State of affairs. First and foremost the revenues never matched the costs to operate the airlin- ers, and the staff complement was always too high. And the disregard for the writing on the wall and the political inertia in saying "enough is enough" had become a running joke. When the whole airline indus- try was facing a crisis, decisions were taken (for example ex- panding the number of planes and finding new destinations) that simply made bad busi- ness sense because Air Malta's economies of scale could never match those of its mighty com- petitors. Under many political adminis- trations, Air Malta was run by a plethora of politically-appoint- ed CEOs, some foreign, mostly Maltese, each with a different perspective on the way forward. No can say that they did not at- tempt to put things right at Air Malta. Everyone seems to have a different medicine for the ma- laise. Yet to be fair to everybody, apart from the unacceptable work practices and loss-making units inside Air Malta, the ad- vent of low cost was the death knell. Austin Gatt, a former PN minister, was consistent in his opposition to low cost and argued that it would mean the end of Air Malta. In 2006, he used his opening speech at the Amitex fair to unleash a scath- ing attack on low-cost airlines that were asking for subsidies to fly to Malta, insisting that the government was not shel- tering Air Malta with state pro- tection. To add insult to injury, while the European Commission is obliged to control how much the Maltese government can fork out to save its national air- line, it allows the use of subsi- dised landing charges for low- cost giants like Ryanair (that is, paid out of the budget of the Malta Tourism Authoirty), to fly so-called underserved routes from second-rate European cit- ies at cut-price fares. The com- petition, and the scale of opera- tion, makes their prices unable to match for Air Malta. Now there is no doubt that low-cost carriers have brought Malta more and more tourists from diverse destinations, but it has not come without a price. We pay dearly for airlines such as Ryanair to keep their routes profitable; Ryanair on its part works within very sustainable and rigorous costs and proto- cols. Air Malta does not. It has to be seen if Clyde Caru- ana will succeed in his target to get Air Malta into the skies as a proud and successful legacy air- line. If he does succeed, it will be a feather in his cap. Equal- ly, if he triumphs in garnering electoral votes on the back of this bold reform, it would also mean that his no-nonsense ap- proach to Air Malta did indeed work and that the electorate is ready to embrace his brand of medicine. It would not be the first time this has happened in Maltese politics. But if he does fail, history will come to back haunt us, telling us once again that some prob- lems just can never be solved. Tough talk by the minister of bluntness Saviour Balzan Clyde Caruana displays a political zeal that is embraced and rejected by many in equal measure