There are two aspects to the Air Malta strategic partnership which are yet to be explained: what is the value-added of the deal for Air Malta and what is the value-added of the deal for Alitalia/Etihad.

They say that the devil is in the detail but, in this case, the broader picture has yet to be revealed.

Let us start from the basics: was there an alternative? The airline needed to become financially viable and all the attempts to make it so were brave and successful to a point. But only to a point.

The airline, at some stage, would have had to be split into a ‘good airline’ and a ‘bad airline’, as has happened with various entities in other member states. This might still happen in the hands of the new partner, which might shed the troublesome or less lucrative aspects of the operations, such as ground handling.

Could the airline have been sold to private Maltese investors, as has been claimed? Perhaps, although the business model would have been even harder without the economies of scale another airline would bring (although it remains to be seen whether these are in Malta’s long-term strategic interest or not).

So if it had to be another airline, does Alitalia make sense for Air Malta, and – crucially – does Air Malta make sense for Alitalia?

For years, the rallying cry of myriad stakeholders has been that Malta needs a national airline which would put national priorities first, protecting the route network which feeds our tourism and economic ties.

Will the Alitalia deal achieve this? Will the 49 per cent shareholding it is considering give it managerial control? Will this minority stake give it the right to tinker with the already much diminished route network? So far, we have no idea why an airline still shaking off its own death throes would want another hub less than an hour from its base in Rome.

With Hunan Airlines, touted as a contender last year, Air Malta’s excellent landing slots in major airports were an obvious lure for a carrier seeking European routes. But what does Alitalia lack that Air Malta could offer? And what new tourist flows or business links would it bring, compared to what a Chinese airline would have brought, for example?

The only clue we have is from Alitalia CEO Cramer Ball, who said: “We have… to look closely to see whether… our networks can complement each other in areas such as southern Italy.”

Would Air Malta be reduced to a regional hub for the Italian airline?

There is one other aspect to the partnership: getting the unions on board. In the past, it took around 18 months to negotiate a collective agreement and the stated intention is for this to be done in one month, which seems optimistic to the point of naivety.

It is an unfortunate truism that unions do not grandstandwith foreign companies the way they do with local ones, let alone with the government. This alone would make the deal a great breakthrough.

Some answers will be obvious quite soon; others may take longer to materialise. So far, all we know is that Air Malta’s code-sharing focus would switch from the Star Alliance to the Sky Team.

Let us hope that the deal would bring more, much more.