Air Malta to add two new aircraft to its fleet and potentially expand routes to Africa

Air Malta will have added two more new aircraft to its fleet by the summer of 2019, Air Malta chairman Charles Mangion said on Tuesday. These additions are part of Air Malta’s long-term strategy and will offer new opportunities to its clients, he said.

Like the most recent addition to Air Malta’s fleet, the new aircraft will both be Airbus A320neo models straight out of the factory. This model has once again been chosen for its advanced technologically and high environmental standards; it emits 50 per cent less noise than previous models and has 17 better fuel efficiency, Mangion explained.

The arrival of these aircraft raises the number of aircraft in Air Malta’s fleet to 12 and signifies further addition to the history of Air Malta’s fleet, with the national airline having flown Airbus type aircraft since a fleet revamp at the beginning of the 21st century.

Mangion also said that in the long term, Air Malta was evaluating the possibility of setting up external bases on other Mediterranean islands, as this was an empty niche which the airline could focus on. Mangion also spoke about the potential expansion of Air Malta’s services in North Africa, with flights to Tunis and Casablanca already in existence, and to other parts of the African continent as well.

Air Malta hopes that the arrival of the two aircraft will allow for more destinations and flights to be added to its schedule, and will surely be hoping that the delays and flight cancellations that characterised previous become a thing of the past.

On these delays and cancellations, the latter of which there were five, Mangion refused to divulge how much they had cost the company financially, saying that it was commercially sensitive information. He said that such delays happened within the whole airline industry, not just to Air Malta, but this was not an excuse for allowing such scenarios to reoccur.

The only way to prevent such a situation from happening again, however, was to have an aircraft on standby on the ground, but this was a practice that not even the biggest airlines did, he said. Indeed, he said, having an aircraft always on the ground was a sign of a dying company.