A pioneer of charter travel

An airline company registered in the UK but wholly owned by a Maltese businessman, British Jet, was launched here on May 1. Rosanne Zammit caught up with Robby Borg, the company's owner and chief executive officer.

His enterprising spirit knows no bounds and his ambition has always been to break records.

After chartering a plane for five years operating low cost flights to the UK, Mr Borg decided to set up his own airline company.

I met Mr Borg at his office in Qawra on the top floor of the Palm Court Hotel, which he owns and which was the first hotel in Malta with 1,000 beds.

Mr Borg, now 57, recalls that at the age of 24 he was the second biggest contractor on the island employing 180 persons. He had built several housing estates and the Karin Grech wing at St Luke's Hospital.

He built the Palm Court Hotel for himself in 1981 and then exited the construction business to become a tour operator.

British Jet has been operating since May 1 to and from Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, the East Midlands and Leeds. Mr Borg confessed he had wanted a second aircraft but decided against it at the very last minute due to the ever-rising cost of fuel and the risk of being so late in the season.

British Jet has one aircraft - a Boeing MD90, wet leased from the Swiss company Hello. The wet lease agreement includes the pilots, engineers, insurance and maintenance but other cabin crew are Maltese. The aircraft takes up to 167 passengers.

The plans are for the company to have three in operation next summer.

One option was to have two operating between Malta and the UK and the other from the UK to other destinations. Another was to have one aeroplane operating between Malta and the UK and two from the UK to other destinations.

Should a second aircraft between Malta and the UK be operated, the company would launch flights to Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Bristol and Stansted. It would also increase its Gatwick flights by another three a week.

Mr Borg, who decided to start working in tourism when the going was tough, recalled that having reached 750,000, the number of tourists in Malta had dropped by 40 per cent in the early 1980s. The dive was so drastic the government had considered turning the country's hotels into residences.

Wanting to do something about the situation, Mr Borg decided it was time to start a tour operation, organising holidays from the UK to Malta.

His plan was not encouraged and the National Tourism Organisation of Malta had advised him to forget his plan. But Mr Borg refused to listen and, in 1983, he brought more than 6,000 British tourists to Malta. His company in the UK was then called Malta Sun.

The company grew but the going was not always smooth and he fought the BBC programme Watchdog which had aggressively criticised him. The court had slammed the BBC saying the programme had been "grossly unfair".

He was also taken to court by clients and made history by bringing a UK judge over to Malta and putting him up at the Palm Court to see the place for himself.

The judge had said the people coming to Malta with Malta Sun were bagging a bargain. Mr Borg took the cue and changed the name of his operation to Malta Bargains.

Eventually, Mr Borg started chartering flights between the UK and Malta but the Maltese were barred from buying seats on such flights, which cost a third of those sold by scheduled airlines.

"Even the second relative accompanying a medical patient had to pay this amount and although I had offered to give these people a free seat, I was not allowed."

But what really prompted Mr Borg to start operating his own flights to the UK was the fact that the Maltese were not subsidising just Air Malta but also the other airlines whose fares were also high.

In 2000, he started operating a scheduled air service between Malta and the UK with Sabre Airways. A flight to the UK then cost between Lm180 and Lm200.

As Sabre then only had a charter licence, he had asked the company to obtain a scheduled licence so he could operate the flights. British Airways initially objected but later dropped its resistance.

While Sabre was waiting for its licence, BA started offering special flights to the UK for Lm75 during the summer. Mr Borg immediately started advertising the introduction of a new airline with flights to the UK for Lm49.

Eventually, Sabre obtained the scheduled licence and Maltese were able to travel to the UK at the same rates as the British.

Since then, the number of Maltese going to the UK has tripled. Other airlines had to cut their fares even to other countries because the Maltese had started going to London to catch a connection since this was cheaper.

Over the past three years, Mr Borg has brought to Malta a record number of British tourists - between 60,000 and 75,000, each year.

This year, he plans to increase the number of British arrivals by 50,000. The government was also saying it wanted to increase the number of UK tourists by 50,000. Were these his tourists, Mr Borg wonders.

He expressed regret that the Malta Tourism Authority had not yet launched its annual £2 million advertising campaign in the UK. The campaign, he said, was usually very effective, with sales doubling throughout its duration.

Advertising was so effective that Mr Borg's advice to the MTA was to close all its offices abroad and set up a call centre in Malta using the money saved on advertising.

Mr Borg regrets the fact that Malta had been stuck with the same number of tourists for the past 12 years. The problem was that the country was increasing its four and five star hotels, but did not have enough good three star properties.

Although it was true that the country had a unique history, tourists still came to Malta for the sun and sea. When they called travel agents they asked for "the cheapest in the sun". So the government should invest more in beaches.

Mr Borg said that the three star market was Malta's main market and three star tourists did not afford five star accommodation. These people preferred to spend their money on drink and having a good time. After all, that was why they were here.

Asked about low cost airlines, Mr Borg said he had created competition in Malta so he was not afraid of it. Competition was healthy as long as all players operated on the same level.

The operators being named as showing an interest in Malta were asking for advantageous rates. Mr Borg said he had never asked for anything.

All employees at British Jet, Mr Borg said, were former Air Malta staff but while the national carrier took them on only during the summer months they were working with British Jet all year round.

Mr Borg said he doubted that low cost airlines would come to Malta considering the country was a small market and they still had a good number of much bigger markets to develop.

As for the fear that established airlines would leave if low cost airlines were allowed to operate, Mr Borg said British Airways and Lufthansa had left and returned while Aeroflot, Swiss Air and Austrian Airlines left but never returned. They had left when no low cost airlines were planning to come to Malta.

What about the tax on air travel originating from Malta? Mr Borg said Malta was the highest taxed country in Europe and probably in the world. While the normal taxation rate was Lm7 to Lm8 in other countries, in Malta it amounted to Lm10 and would rise to Lm20 for Maltese citizens as from August.

The Maltese would also have to pay the tax due in the country they were visiting as well as the fuel surcharge and other duties there might be. In many cases one was paying more in taxes than for the ticket itself.