Updated with PN statement: 2.45pm

Malta will continue to have a national airline, Robert Abela said on Saturday in a vaguely-worded assurance to Air Malta workers worried about the company’s long-term survival.   

Abela said the government would look after the livelihood of Air Malta workers, who would not be the ones to pay the price of reforming the struggling carrier.

Malta would also continue to have a national carrier, he said, noting that the Labour Party’s electoral manifesto had explicitly promised that.

But Abela kept his choice of words vague, and stopped short of saying Air Malta itself would survive its restructuring plans.

“We will still have a national airline. I believe that a national carrier can be sustainable, especially given our insularity as an island,” he said.

Air Malta is currently shedding a record number of workers in a last-ditch attempt to cut costs and remain solvent. An initial government pledge to offer workers different jobs within the public sector at the same pay had to be amended earlier this month to include the offer of lucrative severance packages.

The government has also failed to address reports that plans are afoot to dissolve Air Malta and set up a new national airline that is clear of debt to replace it.

Abela blamed Air Malta’s current situation on a combination of factors, from the high fuel prices airlines are currently facing, to the COVID-19 pandemic that led to the aviation sector being grounded, to longer-standing management issues at the national airline.

“Strategic decisions and purchases made by Air Malta pre-2013 were not always in its best interest,” he said.  

The prime minister was speaking over the phone on Labour-owned ONE radio, in a 45-minute speech that also touched on law-and-order concerns following a street brawl in Ħamrun and the 2023 budget.

'Our streets will not become a jungle'

Questions about public order were prompted by a massive 25-man brawl in Ħamrun’s high street that left two people in hospital.

“These things are disgusting and unacceptable,” Abela said,  “irrespective of whether the people involved are foreign, Maltese or Gozitan.”

The prime minister said he now expected the law courts to “send out a clear message”, spelling out that citizens have a right to live in peace and that public order must be respected.

“Nobody will be allowed to turn our streets into a jungle,” he said, adding that law enforcement would continue to push for any foreign residents caught disturbing public order to be deported from the country. 

Budget 2023: Social partners' proposals are 'mature'

Abela also spoke briefly about work to prepare the government’s budget for 2023.

He assured listeners that the government would continue to support families.

Help would be focused on those “without fewest means”, he said, arguing that those at the bottom of the income ladder were in most need of a social safety net.

Abela also praised social partners for their pre-budget proposals, saying that they were by and large all reasonable.

Lobbyists and unions appear to be understanding the global economic challenges of the moment, Abela said in a reference to supply chain issues, high interest rates and costly fuel prices.

“Entities are showing responsibility with their proposals, there have been no exorbitant ones,” he said. “Our country has matured.”

Abela’s lack of transparency indicates he’s hiding something – PN

The Nationalist Party called out Abela's lack of transparency on Air Malta’s future, explaining that the interview raised suspicions he was hiding something.

“The less he says the more clearly it emerges that there is no plan for Air Malta, and we are convinced that the government is going to liquidate the national airline,” the PN wrote in a statement.

The PN added that Air Malta employees deserved to know clearly whether their jobs are at threat, and that businesses and taxpayers also had the right to be informed on the airline’s future.

The PN also called on the government to declare publicly the plan for Airmalta’s assets, the amount of debt they have with local and foreign banks, and how they planned to deal with the remainder of workers, if the national airline is liquidated.