Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1508764
NEWS 16 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 OCTOBER 2023 When it looks this good, you might want to start with dessert first. Relax and enjoy your three-course meal while we take care of your comfort and safety. With a choice of regional dishes, extra snacks on longer journeys, and a wide range of complimentary drinks, you may need to loosen your seatbelt a lile. Fly to over 130 destinations including Dubai, Australia and Cyprus and enjoy the journey as much as the destination. ECONOMY has never tasted so sweet KURT SANSONE AIR Malta will die and rise again as a new airline after the Europe- an Commission rejected govern- ment's request to inject millions of euros in the ailing company. The changeover is expected to be announced on Monday by Fi- nance Minister Clyde Caruana after talks between Brussels and Malta came to an end. Government had been seeking authorisation to pump €290 mil- lion to save the airline from bank- ruptcy after two previous unsuc- cessful restructuring attempts. Air Malta is beset by decades of polit- ical interference and bad manage- ment decisions that led to losses made worse during the COVID pandemic. Employees who spoke to Malta- Today on condition of anonymity said intensive work was under- way at Air Malta headquarters in preparation for the changeover. The livery and website of the new airline have, however, been kept under wraps. The reincarnated airline will op- erate with eight aircraft, the same as present, after government in- sisted with the Commission that reducing the fleet would be detri- mental. Sources have said the transition is expected to be seamless for cus- tomers but workers will have to be made redundant and re-employed by the new company. Sources said the government is committed to re-employ all of Air Malta's workforce that currently stands at just under 400 people but they will be engaged on new contracts and pay arrangements. It is understood pay packets will be less generous than those cur- rently enjoyed at Air Malta. Sources said new work agree- ments will ensure aircraft utilisa- tion will be much higher than it is today, increasing the airline's capacity to carry more passengers. The dissolution of Air Malta and the creation of a new airline is expected to cost taxpayers some €300 million in capital investment but sources said the new struc- ture would ensure the company is profitable. Air Malta halved its workforce over the past two years as part of restructuring undertaken while talks were underway with Brus- sels. Hundreds of millions of euros of public funds were used for severance packages, volun- tary retirement schemes, and job transfers with other government institutions. The ground handling operation was also hived off into a separate company. However, despite these efforts the airline continued to lose mon- ey and Brussels saw no option but to close down the company and create a new one, similar to what happened in Italy with Alitalia. The airline first underwent a re- structuring exercise in 2004 just before Malta formally joined the EU thus escaping the clutches of the European Commission. But just six years later the government had to step in again to bail out the airline. A restructuring process agreed with the EU saw Air Malta shed most of its assets, including the Selmun Hotel and its sprawl- ing headquarters alongside the airport. At the end of the five-year re- structuring exercise, the company was still struggling with the last accounts being published in 2018. Matters became more com- plicated when former minister Konrad Mizzi had entered into a side agreement with pilots in 2017 that afforded them very generous redundancy arrangements if they were to be let go. Two years ago, Clyde Caruana said the airline was losing more than €170,000 daily to operate its aircraft. End of the road for Air Malta as new national carrier beckons