Leaving aside the RJs and Azzura Air’s costly mismanagement, the handling of Air Malta over the past 20 odd years stinks of politicians’ involvement in the affairs of the company and I cannot understand how those involved in giving jobs for political favours and votes dare to show their faces in public, let alone continue to serve in the country’s administration.

Air Malta’s operation is/was so politically loaded that none of the successive and well-rewarded CEOs had the guts to make the position of 50 per cent staff overmanning public, possibly because of their loyalty to those who appointed them to these lucrative positions in the first instance.

One can accept a figure of two to five per cent fluctuation in an operation of that scale but never in the history of any national airline was one ever faced with 50 per cent of employees surplus to requirements overnight, not even in the darkest moments of Alitalia.

Such information would have been clear to all the CEOs, at the outset, yet it was only when external auditors with the expertise of some foreign assistance examined the airline closely that this information became public knowledge.

This is nothing short of downright abuse of taxpayers’ money and is yet another scandalous episode in Malta’s history where jobs for votes came before the interests of the running of our national airline!

A public inquiry should be the order of the day to establish during whose tenancy this gross overmanning took place and hence who should shoulder responsibility for turning a once profitable entity into a farce!