The outsourced power center of Michael O'Leary is located in Birkirkara, the largest municipality in the Republic of Malta, to the left and right of construction sites. In the Centris Business Gateway, as the office complex is called, the nominated persons from Malta Air and now also from Lauda Europe are on duty.

With Malta Air's fleet growing, one might well expect a huge building. This is not the case, however, because the two Ryanair subsidiaries only use one floor of the complex. The actual decisions are of course made by Michael O'Leary and his subordinate managers. Not surprisingly: mostly in Dublin.

From Birkirkara, however, the flight operations of Malta Air are controlled. The same will be done for Lauda Europe from here shortly. There are certainly regulatory reasons for this, because certain functionaries have to work at the official headquarters of the respective airline.

In the meantime, Lauda Europe has received everything it needs from Transport Malta to be allowed to fly commercially. The operating license and the AOC (number: MT-62) are of course already in your pocket. By the way, the three-letter code is LDA. The carrier's internet address is no longer laudamotion.com, but laudaeur.com. A separate homepage has not yet been loaded. In the next few weeks, the entire Laudamotion flight operations will be taken over by Lauda Europe.

In the meantime, company boss David O'Brien has also informed the German workforce that the Stuttgart base will be closed on September 30, 2020 - earlier than originally announced. The base in Düsseldorf, which is actually regarded as “saved”, will be given up on October 24, 2020. The jobs are to be cut. It is still completely unclear where within the Ryanair route network the Airbus A320s currently stationed in Germany will be used.

By the way: A company sign from Lauda Europe Ltd. one looks in vain. These are not (yet) available. As the photo below shows, the name is not on the mailbox until the time it is taken. So far, only Malta Air appears in the tenant directory, which is installed in front of the elevators. Lauda Europe is still a “phantom”, but with AOC and operating license.