Air Malta denies Cassola’s FOI on PS Chris Bonett’s seating pandemonium

Air Malta has denied a Freedom of Information request from independent politician Arnold Cassola on the kerfuffle caused on an Air Malta flight to London involving Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds Chris Bonett.

Cassola had also filed a complaint with the Office of the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life over The Shift’s report on how Air Malta passengers on a flight to London were apparently ordered out of their pre-booked seats to make way for the parliamentary secretary and his family.

because of the ensuing commotion, in which the junior minister is said to have eventually had his way, the flight ended up taking off half an hour late.

“After delaying answering for nearly two months, Air Malta is refusing to clarify what had really happened when Chris Bonett and family flew to London on holiday last December,” Cassola said earlier today.

He observed how Bonett had explained that he booked a Christmas holiday to London last summer for himself, his wife and his two children. The PS also said that when booking the Air Malta economy flights, he had made sure to reserve four seats next to each other, with his three family members filling up one aisle and himself taking up a parallel aisle seat.

But passengers on flight KM116 on 7 December said they were told to vacate the pre-booked seats they had paid for in advance. They were instead given other seats in different sections of the flight’s economy class.

When asked for the reason behind the manoeuvres, Air Malta staff told relocated passengers they had been given instructions to change the pre-booked seating arrangement to make way for “a VIP” who would be boarding the flight.

The passengers then realised their original seats had been reassigned to Bonett and his family.  Air Malta staff told the aggrieved passengers that the junior minister had insisted his family members were to all be seated in the same row.

In comments to Lovin Malta, Bonett said that when his family checked in at the airport’s ministerial lounge, they were given four boarding passes scattered throughout the plane.

When asked about the crew’s comments that passengers were to make way for a “VIP”, Bonett told the news portal that he could not answer for what Air Malta told passengers at the check-in desk as his family had checked in at the airport’s ministerial lounge.

The use of the ministerial or VIP lounge at the airport comes at a cost per passenger – footed by the government when it is used for official business, but it can also be paid for by non-official passengers who require some extra pampering.

With Air Malta now denying an FOI request, Cassola speculated today that there were only two plausible explanations: “Either Bonett is telling the truth when he says he bought and paid for his four seats in September 2022.  But that would mean that the Air Malta online reservation system is worthless and full of flaws.

“The second,” Cassola suggested, “is that Chris Bonett is lying.

“The omerta’ on the part of Air Malta in refusing to answer such simple questions only increases commuters’ suspicions that there is something amiss in this case.”

In his rejected FOI, Cassola asked the airline to confirm that the four seats next to each other were booked and paid for at the time of the booking, in summer 2022.

He also asked the airline to explain how “when Bonett and his family checked in at the airport’s ministerial lounge, they were given four scattered boarding passes”.