Malta International Airport, a subsidiary of Flughafen Wien AG, is confronted with the fact that the airlines have canceled around 480 flights for the next few weeks. The lion's share goes to the state-owned Air Malta.

As with other airports in Europe, the airlines suffer from the fact that from around January 10, 2022, there will be hardly any bookings. Since various tightening of the entry and quarantine regulations that were issued because of the Omikron variant, the demand has literally collapsed. The only airport in the Republic of Malta is not spared from this either. 

Traditionally, winter in Luqa is less busy than summer, but cultural vacations were also in demand. On average there are 87 flights to / from Malta per day. In January 2022 it will be much quieter and airport boss Alan Borg told the Times of Malta that he hopes things will start to improve again from March 2022.

So you get in the mood for difficult winter months in Luqa. The state airline Air Malta said on request that it had received around 2021 cancellation and reimbursement requests in December 2.000. In November 2021 there were also around 2.000 pieces, but it is expected that there will be even more in the current calendar month. Currently, most of the inquiries relate to bookings for the period after January 10, 2022.

Germans and Austrians have canceled Christmas vacations

The consequence of this is hardly surprising: Air Malta will reduce its offer from the beginning of 2022 in order to avoid flying through Europe with empty planes. A very restrained demand is also seen for February 2022, so that the sparrows whistle from the roofs that the reductions will drag on longer than “just January 2022”.

The Ministry of Tourism reports that there were a particularly large number of cancellations from Germany and Austria for the time around Christmas and New Year. Both markets - along with the United Kingdom - are considered to be particularly important for Maltese tourism. But they are optimistic that things will go better again in the coming year. It remains to be seen whether that will happen.