Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1519405
IT'S been a while since I flew out of Malta on any airline – and an even longer one, since the airline was Air Malta - so I'm not sure if it's still the same old public an- nouncement that greets passen- gers as they board. In the old days, however, it used to sound a little like: "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard Flight KM3046 to [insert destination of your choice]. As part of this flight will be over water…" Huh? Can you repeat that last part again slowly, please? 'Part of this flight will be over water', you say? Well, I'll be danged! Who would ever have worked out that one out, huh? Here we all are, liv- ing on what we all know perfectly well is an 'island' – which, in turn, is defined as a 'parcel of land, sur- rounded on all sides by WATER' – yet it seems we all need to be reminded of this fact, every sin- gle time we leave Malta for any foreign destination… on what is generally known as an 'OVER- SEAS' flight, for crying out loud!! I mean, come on! How ignorant did those old Air Malta pilots even think we all were, anyway? Which part of the word 'over- seas', specifically, did they think we couldn't understand..? OK, rant officially over! (I've been meaning to get that off my chest for over 40 years, you know.) Now that I've finally said it, however: well, I am suddenly assailed by a niggling little doubt. Who knows? Maybe those pilots did have a small point, after all. Maybe we really DO need to be constantly reminded, of even the most self-evident realities that surround us, as a nation… given how often we act as though they simply don't exist, at all. Naturally, this brings me to why I'm even writing about Air Malta – or, to be more precise, the new 'national/non-national' airline we cooked up to replace it with – for starters. This morning, we awoke to the news that: 'KM Malta Air- lines to offer subsidised flights to voters for June elections'. In the article, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana confirmed that: "Maltese voters living abroad will be offered subsidised flights to enable them to vote in Malta on June 8"; and also that '"the gov- ernment will pay for the subsi- dies." (Because it seems we are al- so too dumb to understand what the word 'subsidised' means, without an official government explanation...) But never mind that, because already we are confronted by the first of many puzzling ques- tions. Excuse me for asking, but… wasn't 'government subsidy' (or the lack thereof) one of the main reasons why the original Air Mal- ta airline was eventually forced to shut down, altogether? And wer- en't we also told, at the launch of the new airline, that 'KM Mal- ta Airlines' would: a) be run on strictly commercial lines, and; b) avoid repeating the same mis- takes that led to its predecessor's untimely bankruptcy? OK, tell you what. Let's rewind a little, and go over the sequence of events culminating in the demise of Air Malta. As I recall, it went something like this: • Malta joined the EU in 2004; From 2004 onwards, the EU politely tapped us on the shoulder, saying: "Sorry, but you can't just keep throwing millions in tax-payers' money at a failed national airline, in defiance of all the Union's competition laws. It's called 'State Aid', and that sort of thing is now ILLEGAL…" • … to which Maltese governments (both Nationalist and Labour) have always replied: "U ejja! U please! Can't we make a small exception, just this once? Look, we have a whole new re- structuring plan in place (and it will only cost the taxpayer 55 million this time, promise!)" • to which the EU con- sistently replied… Well, you can work out the rest for yourselves. But for what it's worth, the short version of the EU's answer was: "NO, dammit! (Just get it into your head, OK? And don't bloody ask again!)" In a nutshell, all Malta's pro- posals for structural reform, over the past 20 years, were simply thrown out of the Berlaymont's window… and the Maltese gov- ernment was eventually com- pelled to scrap its national air- line, in favour of one [that was supposed to be] modelled along 'private sector' lines. And yet, less than a month since KM Malta Airline was of- ficially launched, we now have the Finance Minister telling us that - for the umpteenth time - he is going to defy the EU's ban on State Aid, by throwing public money [Note: at the last election, the Air Malta subsidy cost the taxpayer 1.8 million] at what is supposed to be a 'private, com- mercially-run' corporation… … effectively undermining the entire raison d'etre of even launching this new 'national/ non-national airline', in the first place. So, um, the question almost asks itself, doesn't it? If we are going to treat KM Malta Air- lines, right from its inception, in exactly the same way as we had earlier treated Air Malta – that is to say, as 'a glorified cash-cow/ political-problem-solver for the government of the moment' – doesn't it also become INEVITA- BLE, that the new airline will also suffer precisely the same fate as the old one? But wait, there's more. Leaving aside that Clyde Caruana is clear- ly trying to use the same old strat- egy with KM Airlines, as he (and others before) him had already tried, and FAILED, with Air Mal- ta… … this time round, there is also the small question of WHY he is so keen to squander public mon- ey, on such a manifestly extrava- gant (and therefore, unnecessary) measure. And to be fair to Caru- ana: it's not a question we could have realistically asked about all his earlier efforts to save the na- tional airline, is it? No, indeed. As I recall, the Mal- tese government had weighty, compelling arguments – involv- ing issues like national security, no less – to back up its consistent whining of: "U ejja! U Please!", etc. There were, in brief, valid justifications for Malta to request (and be granted) a 'small exemp- tion' from the EU's competition laws: ranging from the island's widely-known connectivity is- sues; its territorial limitations; its vulnerability to internation- al competition; its ability to re- spond to national (and interna- tional) emergencies; and many, many more. On this occasion, however? What justification could there possibly be, for Malta's govern- ment to grant such a spectacu- larly unfair (not to mention IL- LEGAL) commercial advantage to one particular airline, over all the other private ones servicing the same routes… thus automat- ically shooting down any hope of a 'privately-managed, commer- cially-run' airline, of the kind that KM Malta Airlines was all along meant to be? maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 APRIL 2024 10 OPINION Bringing Air Malta back from the dead… just to watch it die again Raphael Vassallo