Air Malta has almost twice as many employees per aircraft as some comparable airlines, an exercise undertaken by the Times of Malta has shown.

The national airline will have 143 employees per plane this winter, when it intends to reduced its fleet to seven aircraft.

Croatia Airlines, which operates 12 aircraft, has an average of 89 workers while Austrian Airlines with 80 aircraft has an employee-per-plane average of 75. Beleaguered Italian airline Alitalia has 140 employees per aircraft.

Last week, Air Malta announced plans to further reduce its fleet to seven aircraft in winter and eight in summer, though the plans were not accompanied by a planned reduction in staff numbers. Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis insisted that there were no plans to reduce the workforce.

But aviation experts told the Times of Malta that while higher utilisation of the airline’s planes may make sense, staff cuts had to accompany this decision if the company was to survive in the long-term.

Read more in the Times of Malta.