Eight months before flying with Air Malta to Paris this June on KM466 we were told to book early for these flights and that we had to pay in a couple of weeks for the tickets, including taxes, as most of the seats were taken. After just over a week, fares rose by another Lm10 as very few seats were left, so by end November we had to pay from Lm73 for a child and up to Lm102 for an adult plus Lm43.34 taxes per ticket. True enough, the flight offer was taken off their internet site a few days later. So we thought Air Malta must have exceptionally good business having been paid for all the seats seven months in advance.

Yet, when we boarded the plane over 70 seats were empty. Coming back there were hardly 20 people to board the plane. In fact, it flew us via Dusseldorf to offload passengers that were already on the plane and pick up others coming to Malta as they said their plane had a technical fault.

There was an improvement in catering but why so many empty seats when we were asked to pay higher fares and make advanced payment due to "heavy bookings"?

We also got to know that this happened to others who booked Air Malta flights. So hooray for low-cost airlines.