If you like, send in a comment about which singer the title evokes. Or send in a rude comment if you're a Labour Troll, whatever.

Just for the record, in the past I had professional connections with the airline, but what I'm writing about today has nothing to do with whatever I used to do for it. I only say that because the Lil'Elves will no doubt hang one of their tatty bonnets on it.

I'm not one who believes that commercial entities should be run by unions, especially not by craft-based unions whose vision extends very, very little beyond their perfectly legitimate sectoral interests.

That said, it's interesting that the only unions that are screaming blue murder at Air Malta's top-management and its owners (the one tends to do what the other wants anyway if current evidence is anything to go by) are the pilots' and the cabin-crew unions, while the biggest union by far within the company is being deafeningly silent.

That's by way of complete contrast with the way it used to screech to high heaven whenever anything was done under a PN government. Why this should be so is a good question.

It is - lest you missed my sarcasm - only a good question if you've been living under a rock for the past 50 years or so: the General Workers' Union, for it is to this august body of men that I refer, only screeches and hollers if what is being done is not being done by a Labour Government.

If, whatever it is, is a Labour thing, then circumspection, reticence and forbearance are the order of the day.

So, what we have here apparently is an airline that is going to pare its fleet down but will keep carrying the same number of people and servicing the same number of routes. And it will pull this little trick off without cutting down on any of its employees, even though it is a known fact that the employee-to-plane ratio is one of the highest in the world.

We're going to have less planes but the same number of employees, less planes but the same number of routes and less planes but the same seat capacity is what KM's high panjandrums want us to believe, thereby appeasing the unions, the tourism industry and anyone else who needs to be appeased.

We're also, of course, going to have the same level of silly pricing.

Just as an example, Malta-Berlin-Malta would have been in the region of €1,200 for two, while Malta-Eindhoven-Malta plus car hire for a week (it's a six-hour drive to Berlin, no idea what the train would have cost) with the Irish bunch was around €400 for two for the flight and €400 for the car - but we didn't get a dry roll and a bottle of water on Ryanair.

Oh, and if KM are going to keep the same number of employees, what's this I hear about temporary cabin crew being axed? I suppose if you're temporary you don't count, but isn't everyone "temporary" at the end of the day?

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.