The only thing I know about airline management is that it has to do with managing something that is not shipping.

It follows I have absolutely no idea how well or not-so-well Air Malta has been and is being run. I can only speak as a regular passenger.

A satisfied one as it happens. Yes, I’ve had a couple of problems recently with the telephone booking service, both of which were fixed super-efficiently by the ground staff (I was left stranded for about five minutes in all.) Then there’s the food, which I sometimes find vile.

But that’s a small price to pay for the rest. By that I mean check-in people who can take some extra weight without making a fuss and asking for your credit card, cabin crew who behave as if you really mattered (‘Some more coffee, Sir?’ – try to better that at the best restaurant in Malta), and a general ability to make you feel good in your seat. When all of that comes in Economy, you know you really can’t complain.

Not that I would mention the dreaded E-word to Air Malta employees right now. That’s because even although Business Class remains as plush as ever, many of those in Economy stand to lose their seats. But like I said, airline economics are really not my thing.

Which is why this piece looks at budget airlines from a rather unorthodox angle. The standard storyline is that travellers can resist anything except a cheap flight. Never mind the dull livery, the scramble for seats and the luggage-weight inquisition, the argument is that any cost’s alright as long as it’s peanuts. Someone told me the other day that one airline is even considering standing aviation, so to say.

Thankfully that was not the case last Monday when I had occasion to hop from Germany to Switzerland. Naturally I chose a budget airline, thinking price was all that mattered – until I sat down to the flight magazine. I am now convinced there’s much more to cheap flying than saving money.

I suppose flying comes in two models. The first is somewhat old-fashioned and dates back to the days when leg room really meant that, meals came with breakable china and shiny cutlery, and ‘air hostesses’ looked like they had just stepped off a catwalk. It’s a kind of luxury that’s been given a new lease of life by some well-known airlines with exotic-sounding names.

True to the cost, this is more about five-star accommodation than flying. The ads parade radiant people in seats that look like beds, five-course meals, and the rest. The point is that it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, feel like flying at all.

The pages of my magazine offer an altogether different kind of dream. I trust no one will sue me for saying that the tome in question is Easyjet’s own Traveller, a 195-page full-colour (if a tad orangey) compliment marked “Your free copy to take away with you”. No commandments were disobeyed in the writing of what follows.

Traveller tells me that Easyjet now offers 560 routes between 130 airports and 30 countries. The orange map looks like Napoleon’s sleepless nights and the destination guide runs into scores of pages. No one single place is privileged – I honestly don’t know (and don’t care) where the company is based.

The comparison is inevitable. As I understand it, Air Malta was conceived and to some extent continues to function as the necessary carrier for incoming tourism. That’s also why the in-flight magazine is mostly about Malta. All routes on the map lead to and from the island.

Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that budget airlines are not simply a cheaper version of things. They’re something else altogether.

Because Easyjet’s map has no centre and Easyjet’s livery is ‘placeless’, Traveller can take me places in a quite wonderful way.

Take cities, for example. I’m told that “spring is the perfect time for a city break” and the best way to experience cities is to “dip into” them as it were. A survey, apparently done on Easyjet’s ‘Facebook communities across Europe’, shows London is the favourite city for a two- or three-day dip.

Food seems to be another bestseller. There’s seafood to be had in Brittany and bitter oranges in Seville. Tel Aviv is “becoming the Middle East’s most exciting food destination”’, jet-setting savvies might like to know.

The magazine combines this kind of Disneyfied culinary authenticity with ads for what we might call McGolf courses and gated real estate that looks ghastly but probably scores some points nonetheless, given the ease of commuting. And you can always rely on “30 inspiring ideas for your diary” that will take you from Madeira to Pristina.

There’s good news in Traveller for business people too. Forget foot-massaging seats and laptop terminals, the big thing is that “if you get to the airport early and there’s space available, we’ll get you an earlier flight home at no additional cost. That’s because Easyjet know you’ve got a busy schedule”.

So busy in fact that you only have time for vignettes, which is what the magazine consists of. Traveller superimposes and jumbles places. And it works, in an embarrassing kind of way. It makes the traveller (or me, at least) feel cosmopolitan, going places rather than going to a place. Forget budgets, this is what flying should be about.

Maybe it’s just that I’m impressionable and that Traveller is a particularly sly act, but I don’t think so.

There is something to budget airlines that goes beyond saving a few euros. It’s about the way they open up a thousand possibilities. You really get the feeling that anywhere is possible anytime; that you don’t have to be rich to be at the Berck-sur-Mer kite festival one day and Rome’s 2,764th birthday party the next.

I can’t help feeling very sorry for the people doing their best at Air Malta. On one hand they’ve been charged with providing a sort of high-altitude social welfare, which means they can’t offer five-star accommodation and charge for it.

At the same time, we also expect them to act all national prestige and flags and I-love-Malta and all that. The kind of placeless delights, and penny-efficient at that, that one reads about in Traveller will be a hard act to beat.

mafalzon@hotmail.com