Air Malta has said that following the lifting of airspace restrictions over Europe, as from today all Air Malta flights are operating according to their normal schedule. Since Thursday 15th April, Air Malta has been flying a restricted flight programme due to the cloud of volcanic ash over northern Europe. Over 200 Air Malta flights from Malpensa northwards had to be cancelled due to these restrictions.

They said that to minimize the inconveniences to its passengers over the last few days Air Malta has operated over 60 reliefs flights to Rome, Graz, Marseilles, Zurich, Toulouse and London Gatwick.During the crisis Air Malta has honoured all tickets issued by the airline as well as those issued by code-shared partners and offered its passengers free re-booking on any Air Malta operated scheduled flight or full refund of tickets. The airline will be giving passengers who were booked to fly until Sunday 25th April the opportunity to rebook their flight at no charge and travel by Sunday 2nd May 2010.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) the Icelandic volcano crisis cost airlines more than $1.7 billion in lost revenue through Tuesday-six days after the initial eruption. For a three-day period (17-19 April), when disruptions were greatest, lost revenues reached $400 million per day. “At the worst, the crisis impacted 29% of global aviation and affected 1.2 million passengers a day. The scale of the crisis eclipsed 9/11 when US airspace was closed for three days,” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

“As our commitment to the industry, Air Malta has made alternative arrangements for cargo stuck in Frankfurt by trucking it to other airports currently serviced by Air Malta. In fact Air Malta made use of all available flights i.e. Rome, Marseille, Toulouse and Rome.”

“The preliminary estimate of the financial impact on Air Malta runs into hundreds of thousands Euros in lost revenue each day of the crisis. This crisis can also have an impact of future bookings which were picking up for summer.”

“Due to the unprecedented natural phenomena we have witnessed over the past days which have had major financial repercussions on the airline industry, airline associations including IATA and the Association of European airlines (AEA) are undertaking discussions with the various authorities involved with a view to providing guidance to airlines as to how to deal with passenger care related issues in the current circumstances.”

Air Malta said that the passenger backlog could take days to be cleared and over the last few days Air Malta has beefed up its resources at customer contact points. Air Malta’s MIA sales offices had a full complement of frontline staff that had the backing of additional staff from Head Office. The call centre was also beefed up with additional staff and extended its services till midnight and opened up at 0500hrs in the morning 7 days a week.

They concluded by saying that following the crisis Air Malta has started working on aggressive marketing plans in all markets to stimulate once again the demand it was registering over the last months. Air Malta is still monitoring the situation closely and will advise its passengers of any changes in its flight operations as a result of any airspace restrictions on www.airmalta.com.

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