I write from Australia upon our return from a wonderful holiday in Malta, spoilt only by Air Malta's lack of customer care, and can sympathise with Mr C. Bugeja (The Sunday Times, May 11).

Late last December we booked our flights from the UK to Malta with Air Malta, paying slightly more so we could arrive at a reasonable hour, namely 3.30 p.m. on May 9, as this was our check-in date in Qawra.

A change of schedule was e-mailed to us by the end of January, the arrival time to be only half-an-hour later. This was still acceptable to us. However, on April 4, just 19 days before we were due to leave Australia and 35 days before we were due to board our flight to Malta, we were advised once again, by e-mail, that our flight was changed again and would only arrive at 3 a.m. on May 10. By this time we had arranged our hotel at Gatwick for May 8 and advised our flight number, time of arrival to our hotel in Qawra so that transport could be arranged to meet us.

This second reschedule was of great concern to us as we were to leave Australia and had no means of communication with Air Malta. Should there have been any further flight changes we would be unaware of them and possibly missed our flight. The only way we could contact Air Malta was via an agent in Melbourne.

I had two telephone conversations with the agent. I was asked to send an e-mail to him and he was to redirect them to Air Malta as it appears that one cannot contact Air Malta directly. I sent two e-mails in all, the last one giving my son's home phone number and e-mail address in the UK for their convenience of contacting us should the need arise.

We were very disappointed with the lack of service from Air Malta:

1. No acknowledgement from them of either of our e-mails.

2. We were allocated seats, as described by Mr Bugeja, only worse. Ours were in front of the exit and therefore did not recline. So after having to vacate the hotel at 10 a.m. and roaming the streets for 11 hours before our flight we had to sit bolt upright for the entire journey.

3. The final insult was that the crew failed to offer landing forms to non-EU passport holders. At 3 a.m., being first in line at Immigration, we were furious to be turned away and told to go and fill in the necessary forms; all we wanted to do was get in our transport, check in and go to sleep.

Our son travelled Easyjet, paid less, arrived at 1 p.m. and was offered landing forms.