Perhaps a strange questions - but I've wondered about this for a while. There can't be much of a market from Dubai.

Cargo and transit pax, especially to Australia. There are lots and lots of Maltese emmigrants in Australia, IIRC there's actually more Maltese/people of Maltese descent living in Australia than there is in Malta. In fact SQ used to fly SYD-SIN-MLA-AMS back in the days with B742s.

Basically EK is the most convenient airline out of MLA to anywhere east of Malta as they offer great connections and cheap-ish fares. The other options for long-haul travel is either with BA which isn't even a mainline service as MLA is served by GB Airways and is a hassle to connect, having to transfer from LGW to LHR v.v. Then there's LH but only good for trans-atlantic since most of their Asian arrivals does not allow for same day connecting services via FRA. However this should change since KM and LH have signed an agreement to increase traffic via MUC. The remaining airline is AZ which is a bit of a joke since they are notorious for strikes, in fact I think there was one just yesterday. Previous to that SR was a very good airline out of MLA, too bad they went under.

Finally an incentive for EK to fly to Malta is that they have traffic rights on the LCA-MLA-LCA segment since it is flown in codeshare with KM, kind of like the agreement EY has with SN over the BRU-YYZ-BRU sector.

Probably just some of the many reasons as to why Qantas and Air Malta entered a codesharing agreement in July 2005.

Great post. Thanks for the insight ^

I had a feeling that it was something to do with transitting pax to Austrailia, but I could never figure out why the flight from Malta arrived into Dubai at 0040 (which required a long wait in DXB for flights to SYD) rather than the next morning. Maybe there is more demand for services to PER and MEL than SYD?

Soon PER will get its own morning flight (EK424) departing at 0935, which means that you will be able get to PER/SYD/MEL leaving Dubai in the morning.

However, only PER and MEL enjoy middle of the night departures which connect well to the MLA-DXB or MLA-LCA-DXB flights currently. Maybe this will change?

Cheers

You should also keep in mind that Malta is the gateway to Libya. For years the best way is there was to take a ferry from Malta. A few airlines continued to fly adhoc service to Tripoli such a Korean but for others Malta and a boat was the only option. It will be interesting to see if the flights drop off a little.

A while ago (or still?) EK flew DXB-MLA-TIP-DXB, but no traffic rights MLA-TIP

A little OT but how long is the ferry from Malta to Libya? Would make for an interesting trip if not too too long.

They don't do anymore. They now combine LCA and MLA (LCA flight sused to go n to ATH - which some of them still do). TIP flights carry on to one or other West African destination (Casablanca ??) nowadays.

Casablanca is served nonstop DXB-CMN-DXB. According to the EK route map, EK currently operates DXB-TIP-DXB only. However, they will start flying to Tunis as an extention of the Tripoli flights. (DXB-TIP-TUN-DXB and/or DXB-TUN-TIP-DXB)

Cheers

Actually for a few weeks now ATH is all nonstop and, I believe, daily. The Saturday LCA flight now carries on to MLA effectively increasing that destination to 5x weekly