A booking a minute for Ryanair's Malta flights

No less than 6,000 advance bookings have been made for Ryanair's Malta routes in just four days - which works out at a booking a minute, airline communications head Peter Sherrard has told The Times.

The airline seats were snapped up between September 7 and September 10, the majority of which were for the Luton route. Around 85 per cent of all bookings were made by foreigners.

"Sales on this route have been very strong, especially considering that the (Malta) routes will not start until October 31. Generally, a lot of the bookings are done within a month," Mr Sherrard said.

"We expect this exceptionally high rate of bookings to continue with the extension of our free flight sale until midnight Thursday."

Ryanair has allocated around 30,000 flights at the cost of a paltry one euro cent on the Malta route until March, although other charges then raise the final ticket price.

Europe's main budget airline announced its Malta flights, which also include Pisa and Dublin, last Thursday after it responded to government incentives and support schemes in a bid to get airlines to fly to underserved destinations and boost tourism in the winter months.

In the meantime, officials from the other earmarked low-cost airline - EasyJet - last night held a meeting with the Malta Tourism Authority.

Despite claims that EasyJet was having second thoughts on Malta, MTA chairman Sam Mifsud believes there is still a chance for the Luton-based airline to start operations to Malta. EasyJet had submitted proposals to develop the Luton and the Mulhouse-Basel routes.

"Since EasyJet were planning to start operating in spring they still have some leeway to plan things accordingly. We're still discussing matters and they haven't told us they're not operating," Mr Mifsud said after the meeting.

"Of course they questioned why we gave the green light to both EasyJet and Ryanair to start operating to Luton and we made it clear that we prefer to have more than one airline serving that destination."

The airline officials are expected to hold another meeting with Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech today.