Malta Air will serve Malta should anything “untoward” happen to the national carrier, Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary has said.
Speaking to Times of Malta, O’Leary said Malta Air, a Ryanair subsidiary based on the island, will continue to step into any routes left unserved by Air Malta due to cutbacks.
Air Malta is in the midst of painful reforms to prevent its collapse after years of loss-making.
Asked if Ryanair is already eyeing taking over any particular Air Malta routes, O’Leary said this was not the case, as Air Malta generally operated to “high-cost” airports in Europe.
He observed that the country is no longer dependent on Air Malta as the Ryanair group operates 65 routes to Malta in summer and 55 in winter.
“I think Ryanair’s investment in Malta Air means there is now an alternative [to Air Malta],” said O’Leary, who was in Malta on Thursday to announce his airline’s winter routes to Malta.
Questioned if he views the millions pumped into Air Malta by the government as amounting to unfair competition, O’Leary said: “Air Malta isn’t much competition to us at all”.
The Ryanair chief said he nonetheless recognises the political reality and pride in Air Malta as a national carrier.
O’Leary said Ryanair has offered the government its “help and assistance” to aid Air Malta’s survival, but did not elaborate further on what this could mean in practice.
“We do not want to threaten Air Malta, we want to see Air Malta survive. Competition between airlines is good for consumers and is good for tourism in Malta.”
No plans to buy Air Malta
The Ryanair chief dismissed the notion that the low-cost carrier would buy out Air Malta.
“We have been asked if we want to buy Air Malta. No, we don’t. We don’t need loss-making airlines,” he said.
Speaking during a Times of Malta event on Friday, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana promised “brutal reforms” to turn around the airline’s fortunes.
He said Air Malta has over the years been burning through assets and hiring “hundreds” of workers it did not need, burning through €40-45 million annually.
What is Malta Air?
O’Leary insisted Malta Air was more than just a marketing exercise, but had a real, meaningful presence in Malta.
He said that in 2019, the government wanted Ryanair to make a meaningful commitment to Malta, including a fixed based and Malta branding on its aircraft.
“We now have six aircraft painted in the Malta Air colours. We would like to see that increase to 10 over the next few years. We have many more Ryanair and Lauda aircraft operating up and down here.” (Lauda Air is also a Ryanair subsidiary)
O’Leary said Malta Air had also set up an office and would soon be opening up its own aircraft hangar.
“There were accusations that Ryanair was regulatory shopping, with no commitment to Malta. We have proven that wrong.
The decision by [Joseph] Muscat’s government at the time to commit to Ryanair, and encourage Ryanair to commit to Malta, has been spectacularly vindicated,” O’Leary said.
Warning on aviation tax
O’Leary also sounded a warning on EU proposals for an environmental tax on air travel, which he says would unfairly penalise countries like Malta, on the geographic periphery of Europe.
The Ryanair CEO noted that countries like Malta do not have an alternative for overland travel such as trains or cars, unlike the big countries in central Europe.
“It is important that any environmental taxes are fairly levied, you cannot expect the peripheral countries to take all of the burden.”
He said the current proposals will only see point-to-point flights taxed, with the more polluting long-haul and connecting flights being exempt.
“This is unfair, the richest people are on those long-haul flights. They should pay their fair share of taxes, and not expect the peripheral countries, and the tourism economies in the Mediterranean, to pick up all those costs.”
O’Leary said he was not particularly worried about the impact of those taxes on Ryanair’s own low-cost model.
He said Ryanair will continue to have a significant cost gap between itself and its competitors.
The airline would also continue to invest heavily, with plans to take delivery of 200 new Boeing aircraft over the next five years, which would take on more passengers while burning less fuel.
Despite a difficult year, Ryanair was the airline company that carried the most travellers in Europe in 2021. With a passenger traffic of 72.4 million, the budget airline outperformed Germany’s Lufthansa Group by more than 25 million passengers.