We chose to fly Air Malta from Heathrow rather than British Airways from Gatwick as it was more convenient, but on having seen the snaking queue waiting to check in, we wondered if this was a wise move. An hour later we reached the desk and discovered the issue: the staff had recently changed and were unfamiliar with the system, and two of the four desks had printer problems. Hopefully these were teething problems, and queuing times will be reduced bearing in mind that 90% of the passengers were silver travellers.
I’d checked in online 24 hours beforehand which allowed us to select seats free of charge and I’d chosen seats across the aisle in row 7 – the configuration was 3 by 3 with only a few rows in business class. The flight scheduled for 10.50am, took off over 20 minutes late, but with a flight time of 2 hours and 50 minutes, we still arrived on time.
There were the usual in-flight snacks and drinks, and the crew were efficient, and it was pretty quiet with no families or babies onboard.
The return flight was also straightforward, with thankfully no queues at check-in and despite taking off 30 minutes late, we once again landed on time. However, this time we were not quite so lucky with a quiet flight.
