Direct flights to China do not benefit Maltese tourists unless they are to Beijing or Shanghai
The flight between Beijing and Shanghai is two and a half hours
Saying ‘direct flights to China’ is like saying ‘direct flights to the United States of America’ or more pertinently, ‘direct flights to Europe’.
China is absolutely vast and spans different time zones.
The Maltese government and the Chinese Communist dictatorship are not talking about flights between Malta and Beijing, or Malta and Shanghai.
I quote Times of Malta:
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat would not reveal which province the government has in its sight, saying this would be premature, but he did rule out a flight to the capital, Beijing.
“We’re exploring what province would be best suited for Malta and we’re in direct discussions with the different provincial governments,” he said.
That means the flights are intended only to bring Chinese tourists to Malta. Maltese tourists to China are not being factored in. When you visit China, you want to go to Beijing, Shanghai and perhaps Xi’an. To get to the first two, you fly to Frankfurt and change there. To get to the third, you take an internal flight from one of the first two. To get to Beijing from Shanghai, or to Shanghai from Beijing, you fly. The flight takes two and a half hours, only a little less than flying from Malta to Paris. That’s how great the distances are.
There’s no point in a Maltese person being able to ‘fly straight to China’ if it’s only to land at a provincial airport from which we then have to take a three-hour connecting flight to Beijing or Shanghai.
If we are going to have to take that sort of connecting flight, we’d be better off taking it in Europe in far more comfortable circumstances.
I speak from experience when I say that a flight from Malta to Frankfurt with Air Malta or Lufthansa, and the experience of Frankfurt airport itself, are a whole lot more pleasant and civilised than a domestic (internal) flight in China with crew who don’t speak any language other than their own (and passengers likewise), on an uncomfortable plane in which informing passengers of what is happening – for example, when you are holding or circling above an airport for what seems like ages – is considered totally unnecessary.
It makes more sense all round to fly to Frankfurt and takea direct flight to Beijing or Shanghai, rather than to fly from Malta to some provincial airport in China, and then have to take a three hour – or perhaps much more – connecting flight from there to Beijing.
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Muscat makes it sound like he’s the key decision-taker. He isn’t. Whoever buys into Air Malta gets to decide where the direct flights originate.
There will never be direct flights from Malta to China.
Of course, this prediction depends on the meaning of “direct flights.”
Joseph Muscat has already qualified his position: flights could be to somewhere in Southern China (I believe he said this in his video interview with China Daily), and initially they could be chartered flights (same interview?). But that is not the business of direct flights – and anyone can charter a flight to anywhere in China right now.
Direct flights between Malta and China cannot make economic sense, especially if by “direct” one means a flight without stop-overs, although the term could include flights with intermediate stops.
Unless of course China intends to route its business to Africa and the Middle East through Malta and create a hub here. But then again, airlines prefer point-to-point flights without hubbing.
Oh, and I am excluding cargo flights. If China intends to inundate the European market with cheap tech solar panels, then, yes of course, there can be direct flights from China to Malta.
Apparently it is now racist and mhux sewwa to point out the cultural differences between Malta and China.
You know, he might be a nutter, but sometimes Lowell makes more sense than either Labour or the Muzewmini at the “stamperija”.
Doesn’t China itself keep boasting about how culturally different it is from the West and how it consequently cannot have a functioning democracy? Isn’t that racist and mhux sewwa?
A disproportionate number of people fail to make a distinction between race and nationality when accusing others of ‘racism’. ‘Chinese’ isn’t a race, but a nationality, so being “racist against the Chinese” doesn’t make much sense to me.
If you are, then you’d also feel uncomfortable around the Japanese and the Koreans, i.e. the entire Han race, because that’s the technical term for it.
Anyhow, Chinese people aren’t the issue here – that would be silly – but the Chinese government, which is a different entity all together.
Guangzhou, in Guangdong province, is the likely destination.
This doesn’t make sense at all. Why would a Maltese want to fly to some obscure region in China where no one speaks any European language? Also I can’t see a reason how the Chinese will benefit. They certainly do not need Malta to get access to a major European city.
Who is Muscat trying to fool here?
One of the smaller Chinese airlines that has its hub in Guangzhou could benefit by ‘teaming up’ with Air Malta.
Is Malta going to become a transit route into Europe for all those Ebay packages to evade customs import fees into Europe?
Iva hi, ghax Malta ala baba.
Once one gets into the mindset of using a sieve to avoid having wool pulled over his eyes, hearing what is actually being said (not said) is scary. After all there would not be any need for a sting in the tail of every statement if things were above board now would there?