Updated 8am Tuesday with details on delayed Brussels flight

An Air Malta flight from Brussels landed in Malta at 7.25am on Tuesday, having been due at 10.40pm on Monday as the airline battled a scheduling nightmare caused by "technical problems" on one of its aircraft.

Earlier on Monday, two Air Malta flights between Rome and Malta were delayed by over six hours.  

Originally scheduled to depart at 7.35am, the flight from Malta to Rome's Fiumicino Airport was rescheduled to leave Malta at 1.30pm, while the returning flight from Rome was moved from 10am to 3.30pm.  

The flight to Brussels was due to leave Malta at 4.05pm but departed shortly before midnight.

"Air Malta staff proceeded with check-in normally then vanished," an angry passenger told Times of Malta as he waited for his Brussels flight.

Later a member of staff turned up for a few minutes at the gate to give a €19 voucher to those who were there, he said.

The reader, who spent hours looking at flight information screens, observed that many Air Malta flights were delayed - seven flights between 20 and 50 minutes, three flights for more than 50 minutes but less than two hours, and then the longer delays on the flights to Rome and Brussels.

"Delays on board Air Malta have become the norm, not the exception," another passenger said. 

An Air Malta spokesperson said earlier about the Rome flight that the delay was not due to staff shortages but was instead due to a technical issue with one of its aircraft that was being investigated. 

The airline would never operate flights while there were any concerns for passenger safety, she added. 

Flights appeared to be operating normally on Tuesday except for the 8.40am flight to Gatwick, which was rescheduled to leave at 10am.

Earlier this month, Times of Malta reported that Air Malta had embarked on a recruitment drive to employ pilots and cabin crew, a year after it shed hundreds of employees in a restructuring aimed at saving it from collapse. 

“There is no way the airline can operate all its planned flights without recruiting more staff,” an employee had said on condition of anonymity. 

On April 4, the airline had been affected by a technical system error causing 24 flights operated between April 5 and 8 to show as cancelled, while in December Air Malta had warned customers that they were likely to experience delays in the foreseeable future due to the airline outsourcing its baggage handling service.