Addressing a press conference about the PN's proposals for the airline, Mr Grech said he did not believe Air Malta was operating on a level playing field with the low cost carriers when it came to the amount of support given by the government.  

The government has repeatedly refused to state how much aid is given to Ryanair and other low-cost airlines.  

Mr Grech said the success of Air Malta's restructuring plan was unknown as the airline had yet to publish its accounts for the financial year ended March 2016.  

He said Air Malta needed to streamline its operations before being re-capitalised.  

Instead of the traditional job-shedding route of early retirement schemes and redeployments, Mr Grech suggested the creation of a training fund to help Air Malta workers find alternative employment.  

Mr Grech said start-up investment aid should be given to employees who wished to start their own business.  

Once its operations had been streamlined, Mr Grech said Air Malta would then need a 140 million re-capitalisation.  

Claudio Grech.

He said the government had already signalled its intent to take on €70 million in past liabilities from the airline. 

A further €70 million should be sought from local institutions and investors, as well as a 10 million share option for Air Malta's workers.  

These investments should be locked in for seven years in order to avoid speculation, and no one shareholder should have more than 10 per cent of Air Malta's shares, he said.  

Three years down the line from this plan, Air Malta would then be able to float its shares on the stock market.  

He warned that Air Malta would die a natural death if it was not able to invest in order to keep up with the competition.  

A long-term commercial plan should also be drawn up for the airline, to ensure that politicians would no longer be able to interfere in its operations, Mr Grech said. 

In reply, the government said some of the PN’s proposals were positive and it was already considering them.

However, two points were unclear.

The first was on how the recapitulation of the €140 million would be carried out in view of EU regulations. The government was, in the meantime, getting international investment without excluding the local component.

The second unclear point was if the Nationalist Party would speak about the local privatisation of the national airline where the government would lose majority shareholding leading to workers losing the assurances they had been given by the government.

There was no doubt that this government had reached the main restructuring objectives agreed upon between the EU and the previous administration and it was now focused on a post-restructuring strategy which the previous administration had never thought about.

The government was committed to embark on a dialogue with the workers as it did regularly and hoped they would understand the effort that should be made for the company to have a future and commercial viability.

It said the government was always open to discussions with the Opposition and a technical presentation was to be given to the Opposition on the work being carried out. 

There was no doubt that for the issue to be resolved once and for all there had to be a national effort involving not just the Opposition but also the best minds in the country. This was already being done.

The government had already managed to bring down Air Malta's €30 million losses to €4 million, it said.