No disclosure on cheap landing fees for low-cost, minister says

Nationalist MP Antoine Borg has inquired in a parliamentary question about the number of low-cost airlines operating between… Malta and Gozo.

Answer? None.

With no helicopter or seaplane service operating anymore between the two islands, Gozo has been left bereft of any fixed-wing air service despite calls from the business community for a longer airfield that can cater for light aircraft.

In his reply to the MP’s parliamentary question, tourism minister Edward Zammit Lewis told Borg that it was “evident why low cost airlines” do not land in Gozo.

But the minister refused to indicate the level of financial support that low-cost airlines who claim cheaper landing fees under route development funds, were claiming.

“This is commercially sensitive information for a country like ours that is a tourist destination and which is bound by confidentiality clauses with the MTA,” he said. “This sensitivity was indeed adopted by the previous administration. I reassure my colleague that the government is working towards attracting new low-cost and legacy airlines and improve record arrivals in 2014.”