Labour MEP and former Prime Minister Alfred Sant has criticised plans to develop an airfield in Gozo, saying the idea makes no commercial sense.
"In no way can I imagine that plane flights carrying passengers between Malta and Gozo can be commercially viable," Sant wrote on Facebook.
The proposal, he said, "is less believable than that other absurd idea, of the fast ferry."
A fast ferry between Malta and Gozo was opened up to multiple operators following repeated failures to successfully and correctly issue a tender for the service. Two companies began operating the service, only to say late last year that they would be dramatically cutting schedules as the route was not profitable.
The government has since stepped in to pay them millions in state subsidies.
Despite problems with making the fast ferry service viable, the government has pushed ahead with its plans to develop a 445-metre-long airstrip in Xewkija, capable of accommodating aircraft that carry up to 11 passengers.
It submitted an application to develop a 'rural airfield' with the Planning Authority last September.
The government said that it had received some 70 recommendations in favour of the airfield plans and that the over 76,000 square metres of land that the airstrip will take up is already committed to similar development purposes.
Sant said he was "amazed" that so many Gozitan businesspeople had apparently endorsed the plan.
"Everyone is ignoring the fact that a project like this will inevitably fail (if it ever happens)," Sant said.
When that happened, the site would be replaced by residential and commercial blocks, he feared, with the Gozitan countryside the victim.
These blocks will be accompanied by a thousand other requests for more agricultural land to be taken up for construction.
"Gozo deserves better," Sant said.
This was not the first time that Sant has come out against the proposal.
In August, he had joined the growing chorus of concern about building development in Gozo, while also voicing his opposition to the proposed airstrip and a tunnel linking Malta to its sister island.
Sant also has a historical perspective of the challenges of developing a long-term air link to Gozo.
A helicopter link used to be provided by an Air Malta subsidiary, Malta Air Charter, between 1990 and 2004, carrying an average 50,000 passengers a year.
Despite Air Malta having forked out about €345,000 in subsidies a year, the service was stopped as it was not making money.
A Spanish company – Helicopteros del Sureste – had started flying between the two islands in the first quarter of 2005 but, again, the operation turned out to be a loss-making venture and was also stopped.
The seaplane service ran between 2007 and 2012.
Prior to the 2013 general election, Joseph Muscat had said an airstrip would not be a priority for the Labour government. A year later, the Gozo Ministry had said it was considering a number of connectivity options, including the airstrip.
Later that year, the government forwarded plans to the EU for a 900-metre-long grass airfield in Gozo, with the aim of tapping into EU funding for the estimated €14 million project.
The airstrip was meant to be completed by 2017 and be capable of handling both internal flights and air traffic from surrounding regions.
The document sent to the EU had stated that a new airstrip could more than double Gozo’s tourist arrivals. The project, however, fell through.
In 2016, the government had launched a study into laying an airstrip in Gozo, but scant details were given.
In 2019, then Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi resurrected the possibility of a helicopter service, to be operated by government-owned airline Malta MedAir but that service never took off.