EZY in Malta

[bizdev]

I have been trying to get my head around EZY's and SRT's recent announcement to set up a maintenance base in Malta.

Do Malta offer a large low cost pool of labour? LH Technic are already in Malta and do not offer significantly lower third party maintenance to anyone else in Europe.

I can perhaps understand SRT's reasons i.e. to go along with a request from one of it's major customers - but why would EZY want to ferry aircraft to Malta?

One of the ideas I have mulling in my head is that EZY need this for strategic reasons - is this going to be their staging post for a new base in order to expand their operations into the Middle East?

Discuss

bizdev

[horsebadorties]

SRT are getting government funding so it is possibly more to do with Malta wanting to become an aviation centre. It is certainly cheaper than ZRH and still within a reasonable ferry flight time. It is also closer to SRT's Mid-East owners.

[AirbusPhp]

"One of the ideas I have mulling in my head is that EZY need this for strategic reasons - is this going to be their staging post for a new base in order to expand their operations into the Middle East?"

...that sounds interesting, but. Unfortunately over the last years EZY was lacking any real strategic moves (apart from big aircraft orders). What we are doing in Continental Europe is only "joining the dots", fair enough. But at the same time, competitors are going into new markets all the times, and we are not. Neither do we fly to winter holiday destinations (be it Ski resorts or warm spots in the south/southeast) nor have we started attacking the Turkish market from Germany, we just leave it to Turkish carriers (Sunexpress/LH) and Air Berlin. Our marketing team here in DE doesnt seem to quite understand what the market wants in my opinion.