The effects of the corona pandemic are enormous at Airport Luqa, the Maltese subsidiary of Flughafen Wien AG. More than 70 percent of the flight routes lie fallow. This is definitely problematic for the island state, because it is increasingly dependent on the outside world.

“Bringing in infections” hardly plays a role anymore due to the extremely low supply, but the lack of passenger flights also makes logistics more and more complicated. Usually a lot of freight and mail is carried in the cargo hold of the aircraft. In some cases, the goods now have to take extensive detours to get to the Maltese islands.

Those destinations that are still served are heavily thinned out. For example, Rome was still served 2020 weekly rotations in January 27. This year, however, there were only eight rotations in the entire month of January and not per week. The result is that the number of passengers has decreased by 90 percent and January 2021 was the weakest month since it reopened in July 2020.

Only 38.938 passengers were counted. Normally Luqa reached this number of passengers in three days in winter. But the prospects for February 2021 are even worse, because many routes, including Vienna, are pausing and Homebase carrier Air Malta recently announced a further reduction in the flight schedule. Reason: lack of demand.