NEWS | Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Air Malta continues to register strong passenger figures

For the sixth consecutive month Air Malta continued to register strong passenger figures. From August 2007 till January 2008 the airline carried almost 40,000 (+5.4%) more passengers on its scheduled routes from its Malta base over the same period a year before.
Overall (including 5th Freedom traffic – ie flights not originating from Malta) Air Malta registered 60,000 passengers (+9%) over the same period last year.
In January 2008 alone, Air Malta registered an overall increase of over 11,000 (+15.5%) passengers. Passengers on the Malta based routes increased by over 8,000 (+12%). Last month (over January 2007) on the UK routes Air Malta carried +8% more passengers while on Italy Air Malta registered an increase of +29%, on France +36%, Germany +45% and Switzerland +34%.
Statistics issued by Malta International Airport last week for January 2008 reveal that on specific routes operated solely by Air Malta, the Maltese airline carried 14,075 (+32.9%) passengers on London Heathrow, 10,944 (+21%) passengers on Frankfurt, and 5,339 (+72.3%) passengers on Munich (the latter two flights are code-shared with Lufthansa). Other Air Malta routes also registered significant increases.
Preliminary trends also show that this month (February 2008), Air Malta will be carrying 12% more passengers over the same month last year.
Commenting on these results Air Malta’s Chief Executive Officer, Joe Cappello said, “These increased traffic figures are the result of a number of Commercial initiatives undertaken by the airline in these last years. We have reorganised our Commercial Division that including a reorganisation of our outstation offices, enhanced our distribution tools, invested heavily in revenue management systems, setup an e-business function and launched a new portal with a new Internet Booking Engine. These initiatives were further coupled with aggressive marketing communications campaigns abroad that have focused on the short break market segment and the ‘extension’ of the traditional summer season to the off-peak shoulder months. The airline has also increased its marketing efforts targeting ‘individual’ traffic and promoted the simplicity and transparency of our competitive pricing and absence of hidden charges when booking on-line.
“Air Malta’s total advertising spent on its core markets of the UK, Germany, Italy and France during last year has been of around Euro 2.8million. Together with the support of the Malta Tourism Authority (MTA), the airline commissioned TV spots, various adverts on print media, billboards, and adverts on popular internal web portals”, continued Air Malta’s CEO.
“Both Air Malta and MTA are closely working together to continue improving on this positive trend. These traffic results are excellent news not only for Air Malta and Malta but also to all the local tourism stakeholders that are benefiting from the increased tourism arrival figures,” added Mr Cappello.
In the UK, Air Malta has launched a major advertising campaign - the ‘Malta Break Escape’. The campaign presented an unbeatable travel offer with prices starting from GBP69.00 return (includes taxes and charges). Two television campaigns on Sky News for a total of 12 weeks were booked including banner advertising on the popular Sky News portal.
Extensive print media campaigns were carried on daily London and National papers that included full page colour adverts on the Times of London, board advertising in Goodison Park stadium of Everton Football Club, at the Anfield Road Stadium of Liverpool FC, in the Metro gazette which is distributed free of charge on the London Underground rail, together with poster ads on London Underground trains. Similar campaigns were carried out in Italy’s major cities of Milan, Bologna, Rome, and Catania, in Paris and in the Germany cities of Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich.
However, despite these positive traffic figures which show that Air Malta is well on the road to recovery, the airline is still facing financial challenges. The recent spikes in fuel prices coupled with ferocious price competition on several routes, has made the industry more fragile and more has to be done to achieve economic viability for the airline, concluded Air Malta’s Chief Executive.