Air Malta will fly to cities in Sicily, Germany, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg as of July 1, the airline said on Saturday as it unveiled its summer 2020 schedule.

Flights to Catania, Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Prague and Luxembourg will be the first to be operated by the airline, with flights to Swiss cities Geneva and Zurich scheduled to begin one week later.

Bookings for flights to those destinations is now available, Air Malta said in a statement.

The airline’s flight schedule is based on the 'safe corridors' model which Maltese authorities have embraced to encourage travel between countries deemed to be low-risk for coronavirus.

Malta has listed 17 countries and two Italian islands – Sicily and Sardinia – on its initial list of safe corridor destinations. Travellers arriving from those destinations will not need to undergo quarantine or COVID-19 testing. 

Commercial passenger flights were halted in mid-March by authorities and Air Malta has only been operating so-called ‘lifeline’ flights to London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Rome to help stranded individuals return home since then. Those flights will continue to operate, it said on Saturday.

Air Malta unveiled its restricted summer schedule just one day after it announced that it had made just over half of all its pilots redundant, saying talks with the union that represents them had failed.