Flying Air Malta without using Air Malta’s website… is cheaper

There's no better airline than Air Malta for flights to Paris. With the City of Light still untouched by budget giant Ryanair, the national airline flies to Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports for as cheap as €75 each way. With all the generous luggage allowance you need.

You won't get this flight any cheaper: Ryanair does not fly to Paris from Malta, and even if it did, it would mean flying to Beauvais, a full 90 minutes outside Paris and requiring an airport shuttle and a metro ride to reach the city centre.

But a MaltaToday exercise to search for the lowest prices in 2014 revealed that you can get cheaper flights than Air Malta's... by not using the Air Malta search engine.

The national airline charges a €10 administrative fee per person, but travel website lastminute.com does not, offering Air Malta's rock-bottom price as is, without extra charges.

We tried finding the cheapest price for an Air Malta flight to Paris and chose May 2014 as a tentative date for booking the cheapest seat available.

As it turned out, the price was €75 per person each way, to Paris Orly, at an early departure time from Malta and a late departure time from Paris.

Using amadeus.net, we compared this to the price charged through other search engines and found lastminute.com was charging the same price - however without the €10 administration fee per person that Air Malta charges for using its website.

In a comment, an Air Malta spokesperson said the airline introduced service fees on all its direct sales channels in September 2011. At present, the airline charges €15 per booking through the call centre and the MIA ticket office and €10 per booking through airmalta.com.

"This service fee represents excellent value for money and also enables customers to make full use of our end-to-end servicing capability - either through the Call Centre, MIA Ticket Office or through our new online 'Manage My Booking' service. The service fee is levied as a contribution to the cost of distribution, which includes development of the website and ongoing operational costs," the spokesperson said when asked about the €10 fee and why it was not present on other search engines.

"As is the case of all travel agents, online travel agents are able to determine whether or not and at what level they wish to raise service fees on transactions."

Air Malta this week faced the wrath of tour agents, whose commission has now been decimated - reduced from 1% to a mere 0.1% on ticket sales - much to the dismay of the Federated Association of Travel and Tour Agents (FATTA).

"Air Malta's policy in regards to service fees is a further example of the airline's ongoing commitment to a fair and level playing field and constructive relationship with the Maltese travel agency community," said the airline's spokesperson.