Six airlines to offer 17 destinations from Malta International Airport on 1 July

Six airlines will be offering direct connections to 17 airports in nine countries and regions from Malta, the Malta International Airport said in a statement on Thursday morning.

The MIA’s summer schedule, published on Thursday, shows that the routes will connect Malta to Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Sicily, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.

Amongst those routes are flights to Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Budapest, Dublin, Catania, Zurich, and Luxembourg City.

The airlines operating the routes are Air Malta, Ryanair, Lufthansa, Wizz Air, Swiss Air, and Luxair.

The news comes after the government some weeks ago announced that the airport will reopen for travel on 1 July to a select number of designated safe countries and regions.

In all, 19 countries and regions were earmarked by the government as being safe - but some of those are either still closed for travel or never had any direct flights between them and Malta.

The MIA said that all hands are on deck to get the airport and its terminals ready to welcome passengers again after a threemonth lull, and recommended that all travellers check the health and safety protocols in place at the respective destinations before booking their flight.

With the airport still shut for commercial flights, the MIA only handled 3,081 passengers in the month of May - over 670,000 less passenger movements when compared to May 2019.

As air traffic to and from Malta remained at an almost complete standstill for the second full month, aircraft movements throughout May amounted to merely 283 take-offs and landings.

43% of flights for the month of May were humanitarian and repatriation, ferrying passengers to and from more than 10 countries. The rest were cargo flights, which registered an increase of 11% in movements over the same month last year.

The airport was closed in midMarch as a mitigation measure against the importation of COVID-19 cases from overseas, and will re-open on 1 July.

While its opening will be limited, Prime Minister Robert Abela has said that it is crucial to ensure that the country opens up to more destinations by the time 1 July comes, noting that so far barely 20% of the island’s connections have been reopened.