Air Malta yesterday insisted it had enough pilots to cover its entire flight schedule, as a deadlock dragged on with the pilots’ association over the issue of cockpit staff complement.

The Association of Airline Pilots (Alpa) argues the airline needs to employ more pilots to make up for a shortage caused by an early retirement scheme taken up by 12.

Instead of recruiting more pilots, however, the airline is demanding that they be more productive. In the first seven months of the year, Air Malta pilots flew an average of 56 hours a month, just over half the legal flying time limit of 100 hours, a spokesman for the airline said.

Air Malta would like to increase the hours flown per month to 75.

However, the spokesman yesterday clarified that the industrial dispute between the two parties was over taxation of the early retirement scheme and that there had never before been any mention of the staff complement.

The association is insisting that the complement of pilots must be beefed up after it was drastically reduced when the airline spent €5 million on the early retirement scheme, awarding €400,000 to each pilot leaving the airline.

Air Malta’s pilots are under an association directive to dress down – not to wear the jacket, tie and hat.

Contacted yesterday, Alpa president Dominic Azzopardi said nothing had changed since the directive was issued a week ago, adding that a meeting held last Tuesday did not resolve the deadlock.

He said that unlike the figure given by Air Malta’s CEO Peter Davies – that the airline was paying pilots €750 for every day off they were denied – the payment was in the region of €275.

He confirmed that the airline was paying €82,000 a month extra to cover denied days off. He said that if the airline were to employ six new pilots and promoted six first officers to pilot, the airline’s monthly cost would drop to €30,000 – a saving of about €52,000 a month.

However, a spokesman for the company disputed this claim, saying pilots were receiving high salaries and that, in the long run, this would cost the airline much more than it was spending now. Pilots, he said, received a gross salary of €106,000 a year while first officers were paid nearly €62,000.

But Mr Azzopardi insists the dispute is dragging on because the airline’s management does not want to admit it made a mistake when spending €5 million to let go of 12 pilots, creating a lot of pressure on the remaining pilots.

There had been “absolutely no mistake”, the Air Malta spokesman insisted. The airline was bound to work with 110 pilots, as stipulated in the company restructuring plan approved by the EU.

The airline leased out an aircraft and 13 of its pilots to a Polish airline which went bust and the planes were returned to Air Malta, giving them more pilots than allowed.