Air Malta paid €1.3 million to train new pilots, then told them to find other work

Air Malta paid €1.3 million to train 12 cadets into pilots, and then informed them they would have to let them go as winter work was looking bad.

The 12 new pilots were given definite contracts because the national airline could not keep them on, and also told its 155 pilots to take unpaid leave and look for work elsewhere.

Sources said the cadets were going to fly enough hours to become marketable for the international industry by end-2010, and then look for work elsewhere. Their two-year training cost over €100,000 a head and was financed by the national airline.

Another 13 pilots decided to take up work with Abu Dhabi airline Etihad, and Libya’s Afriqiyah Airways, after being “encouraged” by the airline in August to take up temporary placements elsewhere.

The measure was a cost-cutting exercise to relieve the national airline of some labour costs. But sources said Air Malta recalled the pilots, some of whom may have already committed themselves with the two airlines.

“They told us ‘go, we don’t have cash, take unpaid leave, and take up work elsewhere’,” one pilot told MaltaToday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The airline’s decision to stop the migration – uncertain as to whether it came from top management or political levels – prompted the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) to schedule an urgent press conference for this afternoon.

But the press conference, unprecedented for the union, was postponed after ALPA said it had started “constructive negotiations” with Air Malta’s top management.

Air Malta pilots start on a pre-tax salary of €60,000 which goes up to €72,000 for normal line pilots, according to the number of hours they fly. Management pilots can earn up to €120,000, or even get the guaranteed salary of a normal pilot, without flying their same hours.

The pilots have already accepted salary cuts back in 2004, which Air Malta says is money paid back to the company to aid its restructuring.

The national airline has refuted reports that pilots were warned by new chairman Sonny Portelli that Air Malta needed “government subventions”.

But it is well known that the government is looking into ways of circumventing – legally – the EU’s strict rules on state subsidies.

Air Malta had told this newspaper that the airline as looking into “a sustainable business plan that, together with the recapitalisation of the company, would take the airline forward in these very challenging times. A very important element in the plan consists of a number of cost cutting measures.”