The Air Malta chairperson’s €260,000 annual salary is eclipsed by the salaries the airline forked out to its top brass on various years over the past two decades, figures tabled in parliament show.

The graph – detailing the salaries between 2003 and 2022 – was tabled in parliament by Finance Minister Clyde Caruana and shows that in 2005, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2020, the airline’s chairpersons and CEOs were jointly paid just under or a little over half a million euros each year.

The figures were tabled two months after The Shift revealed executive chairperson David Curmi is paid a whopping €21,500 monthly salary and a further €10,000 annual director’s fee to lead the ailing airline that has had to shed half its workforce to stay afloat.  The news of Curmi’s lucrative contract had sparked criticism, including from the Nationalist Party.

According to the figures, between 2003 and 2006, from 2011 to 2014, in 2016 and from 2018 to 2020, the airline’s chairpersons’ and CEO’s joint salaries exceeded Curmi’s 2021 and 2022 pay.

They were paid the least from 2007 to 2010 and in 2015.

Paid the least from 2007 to 2010 and in 2015

The table also shows that if adjusted for inflation rates, the figures would be even more astronomical. According to the ministry’s calculations, the airline’s top brass was jointly paid €600,000 in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2020, €650,000 in 2003 and 2004, and around €750,000 in 2005, in today’s money.

But whereas for most of the past two decades, the airline had two different people serving as chair and CEO, those two roles merged into one with Curmi’s engagement as executive chair in 2021.

Caruana tabled the figures in parliament after he and Prime Minister Robert Abela announced a new national airline will replace Air Malta on March 31 next year.

The announcement came at the end of months of intense negotiations during which the government reached an agreement with the European Commission after it refused to accept a request for fresh state-funding for the carrier.

The new airline will keep its aircraft and retain all its existing workers, and Caruana was adamant that it must make money every time a plane takes off the runway.

Meanwhile, Curmi’s contract as executive chair expires at the end of this year and plans for the management of the new airline as well as salary packages for the new top brass have still not been announced.