Flights of convenience

It does not take much to notice that the airports served by Air Malta (the public service carrier) leave a gaping hole in the middle of Europe. Just about in the middle of that hole lies the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, host to three of the European institutions and a community of 200 plus Maltese.

Thanks to the archaic electoral laws of our country these 200 plus workers will in all probability not be eligible to vote in the next general election. I am not sure that the latter is an inconvenience but insofar as inconveniences are concerned I would like to share a few statistics with readers.

These relate to the time it takes to get to the airports served by Air Malta (add three hours of flight and approximately three hours of waiting/check-in and airport connections to each) from Luxembourg.

It takes you three hours to get to Brussels Airport, four hours to get to Paris and four hours to get to Frankfurt. On a normal trip to Malta via Brussels one would have to leave Luxembourg train station at two in the afternoon to land in Malta International Airport at 11 p.m. (that's nine hours later).

I am glad to note that it is not my predisposition to be a dissatisfied (non)-voter that leads me to remark that the service lies between the unsatisfactory and the non-existent. A number of letters have already appeared in this newspaper lamenting the lack of direct flights provided by Air Malta. I would venture further.

Should any of the planners at the national airline deem the trip to be non-cost effective (which should not really be a consideration in these days of Public Service Carriage) I would suggest that the government issues a new call for LCCs to serve a Frankfurt-Hahn or Metz-Nancy (both one and a half hours away from Luxembourg) to Malta route.

That way we could all "spread our wings and fly".