I travelled from London Heathrow to Malta on Air Malta flight KM101. on August 24 with a friend who is a frequent Air Malta traveller. On arrival at Heathrow airport I was thwarted to discover that my name was not included on the passenger list and had to argue endlessly with the check-in desk staff, explaining this was an electronic ticket with confirmation. Why introduce technology if nobody is trained to use it?

I could have overlooked this occurrence hadn't the flight been a complete nightmare too! My experience turned out to be so unsavoury it will affect my choice of airline in the future.

On boarding I requested a change in seating and was given a seat towards the back, as there were ten empty seats on board. This suited me fine until the in-flight food service arrived. I was appalled at the way the airline host threw the aluminium container on my folding table claiming that that was all that was left, more specifically: "Sinjura, dak fadal!"

The moment I complained about the choice of lunch I was told I shouldn't have changed my seat in the first place. Didn't I pay the same fare as everyone else in economy class? I definitely wasn't asking for business class service. Is this the customer service we pride ourselves on?

And the nightmare hadn't ended. My friend and I decided to celebrate our return home and asked for two bottles of champagne only to be told that they only had one chilled bottle on board. A sarcastic stewardess later offered us her fruit basket, blatantly implying we were inebriated. Is this how Air Malta is treating our tourists too?