I am an exceedingly loyal passenger of Air Malta. Wherever there is a choice I always choose Air Malta, however, the airline is not showing any form of loyalty to its clients. A case in point is flight KM612 to Rome on September 26.

The flight should have left at 7.40am. From about an hour before scheduled departure, the time was moved to 8am. Eventually, we left at 8.10am, that is 30 whole minutes after the supposed departure time.

As a very frequent flier, I do understand that an airline experiences delays through no fault of its own. However, this is the very first flight out of Malta for this aircraft in the morning. Thus, it should not have accumulated any delays that an aircraft would normally experience during its working day.

When I asked the ground staff they could not tell me the reason for the delay but they did apologise. When I asked the cabin staff the reason for the delay they said it was a crew issue. This can either be a lack of crew or the crew arriving late. All passengers arrived there on time for the flight, so I see no reason why the crew members cannot arrive in time for their flight, which, after all, is their job and their responsibility.

From what I understand, it may also be the fault of the transport contractor used by Air Malta. However, if Air Malta is getting a bad service from their contractor they should change their contractors and be loyal to their customers.

This is not the first timethis has happened to the morning flights from Malta. Unfor-tunately, things seem to becoming worse.

People I speak to are getting the impression that Air Malta is becoming a very unreliable airline. Since I always called a spade a spade, I would like to congratulate those at the top, Messrs Konrad Mizzi and Charles Mangion, for getting Air Malta where it is.

Quite an achievement really.