Malta International Airport re-opens for passenger travel
The Malta International Airport has opened for tourists once again, with nine flights arriving in Malta on the first day of the resumption of air traffic.
The airport was shut on 20 March as Malta moved to curb the importation of cases of Covid-19, but after 103 days closed, reopened to tourist flights on Wednesday from a limited number of destinations.
Flights from Poland, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Ireland landed in Malta throughout the course of the day, while flights left the island to Germany, Austria, Poland, Italy, and Ireland. Flights to the United Kingdom are to resume as of today, Thursday.
The airport will open to flights from all destinations as from 15 July.
Economy Minister Silvio Schembri and Tourism Minister
Julia Farrugia Portelli were present at the airport on Wednesday as tourist flights resumed and witnessed the arrival of one of the very first flights to arrive in Malta from Rome, Italy. They were all smiles as they welcomed passengers coming down from the aircraft; giving a warm welcome to the first few tourists who will be revitalising Malta’s tourism sector and, in turn, its economy.
Earlier last month, the MIA released a number of safety guidelines for those travelling through the airport, including the mandatory wearing of a mask or visor and the maintaining of social distancing as well.
Meanwhile, both arriving and departing passengers are being monitored through temperature checks through heat-detecting cameras, with those who are detected to have a fever not being allowed to fly and being sent instead to be tested for Covid-19.
“Today marks two important milestones,” Air Malta CEO Alan Borg said while addressing the press yesterday, “we can walk around the airport with all the activity, and not in the dark. It also marks the start of our journey towards sustainable tourism numbers.”
He said that setting up the airport as it is was no easy feat as they had to find a balance between health and the enjoyment of travellers. “We have set up over 2,200 signs, 180 metres of partitions and new walls. We have also set up new cameras to control clusters of people.”
“It is going to be a long road with regard to numbers, but no beginning is easy and I believe that if we keep working together as we have, we will bring Malta back to its former glory in the coming months,” he concluded.
Tourism Minister Farrugia Portelli said that the day was a milestone for all the workers within the tourism industry.
She explained that they expected 11 flights yesterday, 10 today and a total of 81 flights by the end of this week. 1,800 passengers were expected to land in Malta yesterday, 500 of whom came in through the ports rather than the airport.
“This is a modest figure but we have to start from somewhere. Now we have to keep consolidating our efforts like the ‘aggressive’ marketing campaign, so that we can reach our aim of having 700,000 tourists by the end of this year,” she said.
Economic Minister Schembri extended his thanks to all stakeholders and workers within the sector who made this day possible.
“When we speak of our airport, we are talking about an economic activity that affects thousands of families across Malta and Gozo.”
“This day is an example of how this government works, a government that is close to its entities and stakeholders in order for everyone to pull the same rope. However, the most important thing is that the public collaborates with us because we have achieved this success in Malta through the discipline shown by the public,” he said.
The Malta Independent asked for the minister’s opinion on how long he believes it will take for the tourism sector to recover.
Schembri said that he does not think it’s an issue of time as the important thing is that everyone involved does their absolute best for the country to recover as quickly as possible. “Recovering in six months is better than one year, obviously, so this is exactly what we are focused on at the moment,” he said.
Nonetheless, he added that the targets which the authorities had set for this sector are looking more positive than they had thought - “if we keep moving at this rate we should supersede our targets by a lot.”
“I am confident that activity has restarted , but it is impossible to get the figures we got last year seeing that we achieved record performance in tourism in 2019. However, like I said, there are positive numbers and if we consider them alongside all the other economic recovery packages the government released over the past months, we should expect commercial activity to be good.”