One TV host Karl Stagno Navarra is still on Air Malta’s payroll despite plans to sack hundreds of employees of the national airline. 

Air Malta confirmed with Lovin Malta that Stagno Navarra is still employed, saying that his remuneration is in line with grades in similar positions. No actual figure was given.

Back in 2019, Pjazza host Karl Stagno Navarra was revealed to have been appointed as spokesperson for the national airline with an alleged salary of €90,000 a year. An FOI request for his contract had previously been rejected.

“Do I call you and ask for your salary? Is this a question a journalist makes, for heaven’s sake. My salary has been published a long ago by a Freedom of Information request. I don’t need to stay repeating this. It doesn’t make sense, as if I am the issue at Air Malta,” Stagno Navarra told the newsroom after ignoring several requests.

Details about the appointment remained scant and it isn’t clear what the former journalist’s role with the company has been since his appointment. 

Media requests and press releases are usually handled by people other than Stagno Navarra. 

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana announced that Air Malta will halve its workforce in an attempt to survive, with hundreds of cargo handlers, cabin crew and administrative officials transferred to other government departments.

Caruana has blasted his predecessors for prioritising politics over “common sense” when managing the national airline and admitted that his efforts to appeal for state aid at the European Commission were hindered by credibility issues.

Air Malta’s executive chairperson David Curmi revealed that the airline had only registered an operating profit in two out of 16 years, 2018 and 2019, and this was only the result of non-recurrent events.

In 2018, Air Malta sold its summer landing rights to Heathrow and Gatwick to the government airline Malta MedAir, and in 2019 it sold the Air Malta brand to IP Holding Ltd.

Without these non-recurrent items, the airline would have registered a €17 million loss in 2018 and just broken even in 2019. 

At the time, the government had gone on a PR campaign over the operating profit, with disgraced minister Konrad Mizzi regularly telling the country that the problems of the airline were a thing of the past. 

A few years later, it seems that it was simply spin.

What do you think of the contract?