Air Malta launches flights to Liverpool, Venice and Benghazi

Air Malta will be serving three new destinations - Liverpool, Venice and Benghazi - this spring and summer.

With 12 aircraft based in Malta and three operating from the United Kingdom base, Air Malta will serve no fewer than 46 scheduled destinations, with 200 flights a week, the airline's chief executive officer, Joe Cappello, said during a press conference yesterday.

"The airline will also be expanding its intra-European operations with a new service between Catania and Munich and between Catania and Geneva. In the peak summer months, Air Malta will be operating a weekly flight between Reggio Calabria and Barcelona in July, August and September. It will be the first airline to operate between Italy and Morocco," Mr Cappello said.

The national airline will be increasing capacity on the Italian, German and UK markets so that the number of seats available should go up drastically when compared to summer 2006.

With an additional weekly flight to Munich, to the present seven flights per week, a daily flight to Frankfurt, three flights a week to Berlin and five weekly flights to Dusseldorf, the number of seats on the German market will go up by 54,000.

The increase in capacity on the Italian market will amount to 39 per cent, Mr Cappello said, explaining that Rome is now being served with three Air Malta flights a day. The increase in the number of seats, up by 82,000 when compared to last year, was also due to the two weekly flights to Venice and Naples.

Flights on the UK route will go up by five per cent, with an increase of three flights a week to Birmingham, three to Stansted and two to Liverpool.

Air Malta's code-sharing agreement with Lufthansa, signed late last year, gave the Maltese market access to tourists from outside Europe who fly to the continent via Frankfurt and Munich.

Mr Cappello said the airline had negotiated marketing deals with the international media including major television networks and newspapers. A TV advert being screened abroad, with the Maltese eight-pointed cross as the main theme, was shown during the press conference.

Asked whether the eight-pointed cross, an arguably overused symbol of Malta, could appear stale in an age when the concept of national airlines was less strong than it was before, Mr Cappello said the company had decided to keep the brand with the cross after discussions on whether this should be changed or not.

He said market research had shown that the name of the airline and the cross was identified strongly with the country and with Air Malta, and intrinsically linked with a reputation of trust and reliability.

Was Air Malta affected by the advent of low-cost carriers to Malta?

Mr Cappello said there seemed to be a slight effect on the number of passengers to and from England. However, he still had to analyse the revenue patterns to see whether the biggest effect of competition with low-cost airlines was on outgoing or on incoming passengers.

Air Malta on Thursday received the last Airbus A320 it has leased so that its current fleet, with an average age of two-and-a-half years, adds up to 14 aircraft including five Airbus A319s, seven A320s and two Boeing 737s.