The door of the Labour Party’s fossil cabinet creaks open

Published: January 22, 2017 at 4:35pm

The Sunday Times reports this morning that Tourism Minister ED ZL has been taken off Air Malta’s case and that the airline’s fate has been placed in the hands of the deputy prime minister (Louis Grech, in case you’d forgotten) with Joe Capello as his consultant.

Perhaps they think you can solve the problems of the present and future by resurrecting the ghosts of the past. Louis Grech, who turns 70 in a few weeks, was Air Malta’s chairman in the past when Joe Capello was the CEO.

The incoming Labour government got rid of Peter Davies, cutting off its nose to spite its face, only to create this terrible mess.

Creaking open the door to the fossil cabinet and bringing back Louis Grech, who is supposed to be the deputy PM, and Joe Capello, who is supposed to be retired, means that they are blasting back to the past and giving those two men bigger Air Malta problems now than they could solve back when they were directly in charge.

It also means that the current chairman, Maria Micallef, has effectively been rendered redundant. I have been meaning to comment about her presence all over the newspapers and in the negotiations for a while now anyway. Maria Micallef is the chairman and not the CEO, which means that she should have been nowhere in sight while the CEO took the decisions.

But Air Malta’s CEO, Philip Micallef, quietly resigned last August without a word in the press and he hasn’t been replaced since. He was never quoted by journalists, who went directly to Maria Micallef, who then failed to direct them to the CEO, who is the one who should be taking questions from the press about the company. Instead, she fronted for the airline herself and also spoke about airline matters related to negotiations when that is 100% the CEO’s business.

Philip Micallef, who left a position as chief of a regulatory authority in Bermuda to return to Malta for the Air Malta position, himself replaced Louis Giordmaina (formerly of Lufthansa Technik) in the job. Giordmaina was appointed Air Malta CEO by the incoming Labour government in 2013, but left after less than a year.

Louis Grech, seen here standing between Keith Schembri and Joseph Muscat in this file photograph, has been put in charge of Air Malta’s fate. Expect disaster.