Air Malta to resume ops from early 3Q20 as airport reopens

Air Malta (KM, Malta Int’l) will resume scheduled commercial passenger flights from July 1 as Malta Int’l reopens as part of an easing of coronavirus travel restrictions introduced in March. At the end of May, Malta’s Prime Minister Robert Abela said Malta’s international airport would reopen from July 1 and that the government was continuing to negotiate safe corridors for travel between countries with low rates of coronavirus infection including Luxembourg, Norway, Serbia, Slovakia, Austria, Czechia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Israel. A week later, on June 6, Air Malta announced that it had launched its safe corridor summer 2020 schedule, with flights to Catania, Frankfurt Int’l, Munich, Düsseldorf Int’l, Berlin Tegel, Prague Václav Havel, and Luxembourg to start from July 1, and flights to Zurich, and Geneva coming online a week later. The carrier said it had only been operating ‘lifeline’ flights to London, Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, and Rome Fiumicino for the last three months but these will continue. Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) chief executive Johann Buttigieg said in a statement at the beginning of June that “The announcement that Malta International Airport – our primary gateway to the world – is reopening is of fundamental importance to all of us in the tourism sector, and we welcome it with enthusiasm. The difficulties we have managed to overcome together in the past weeks are testament to the resilience of the industry. New challenges lie ahead, but with them come new opportunities. MTA believes that Malta has all it takes to rebuild a profitable industry that provides a livelihood for thousands and is so important to the Maltese economy.”