UPDATED/Air Malta from Zurich last night – while ED ZL eats, drinks and parties

UPDATED AT 5.30pm: I have been informed through unofficial sources at Air Malta that one plane from its official fleet is in Ireland for repairs that have dragged on. It was supposed to be ready last week. An Air Malta engineer is there with the plane. Repair costs are ratcheting up, and Air Malta is also incurring massive additional expenses by having to lease planes on an ad hoc basis to make up for the gap on scheduled flights left by the plane under repair. This plane, below, is one of them.

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This is the plane which Air Malta used for its flight from Zurich to Malta last night. Passengers have reported to this website that it was dirty, the lavatory flushing didn’t work, the seats were tight, and there was no business class for those who had paid for it. The seat-belt ‘on’ sign never went off – and not because there was turbulence and it was left on deliberately.

This is an ongoing problem. People are still paying premium rates to fly Air Malta while the service is deteriorating noticeably, despite the best efforts of cabin crew, as cost-cutting measures are introduced.

For a while now, cabin crew have been taking a tour down the aisle with a rubbish trolley just before the flight ends, collecting passengers’ trash, disposables and cast-off newspapers. This never used to happen. It tells me that the planes are not being cleaned between flights by specialised teams as they used to be.

It also means that if you don’t hand your rubbish to the crew, it just stays in the seat pocket for the next passenger to find, which is how I ended up shoving my hand straight into somebody else’s used tissues on one particular flight.