Island hopping                  

                            

Ready for take-off: The seaplane is offering an innovative air service to Gozo, at half the price of the helicopter. And its location at Valletta Waterfront means instant promotion for cruise passengers interested in scenic tours.

             

by Vanessa Macdonald

Attempts to run a helicopter service to Gozo - profitably - have failed repeatedly. Why, then, should a seaplane service do any better?

Harbour Air Seaplanes director Winston Azzopardi does not hesitate.

"It is half the price. It is more convenient; you do not have to go through airport security, leaving behind all your bottles and so on. You don't have to check in much earlier. It is like taking a bus.

"Airports have become synonymous with long hours of waiting and intrusive searches. People just want to avoid them...

"And the trip is also fun. I estimate that over 99 per cent of people in Europe have never been on a seaplane before," he said, ticking off the reasons on his fingers.

It seems hard to believe that there is only one other seaplane operation in the Mediterranean - in Corfu. Mr Azzopardi believes that there is a niche here, just waiting to be filled.

Harbour Air Seaplanes is one-third owned by the Canadian owner of the company of the same name, which has a fleet of 33 aircrafts. (The remaining equity is shared between Mr Azzopardi and Alfie Manduca.)

The trip is seamless. You merely show your ID card at the check-in, pick up your boarding card and are shown to the plane just metres away. After quick safety instructions, the plane takes off, airborne within a few hundred metres.

Nine minutes later, it lands outside Mgarr Harbour and taxies to its dedicated pontoon.
Harbour Air Seaplanes can afford to keep its prices down: It takes a lot less fuel to get a light aircraft up into the air than it does to get a helicopter up. And maintenance costs do not even begin to compare.

It has taken two and a half year to bring the project to fruition. The operators had to work closely with the Malta Maritime Authority and the Civil Aviation Department to allay their concerns about safety.

"We have to do a lot of radio work but the fact that we are so fast - we do 210 kilometres per hour - and get airborne so quickly, compared to the shipping in Grand Harbour as well as the Gozo ferries, means that it is easy to coordinate schedules," Captain Darrel Hanson said.

"We won them over by explaining how it works in Canada, even in Victoria, whose harbour is half the size of Grand Harbour."

Will the service fill the gap left by the helicopter? It is still subject to wind and wave conditions (the latter more of a problem in Mgarr) and many analysts believe that a fixed-wing aircraft is the only solution to ensure access. Still, the new venture will probably be able to survive in winter by focusing on scenic trips as conditions in Grand Harbour are more forgiving.

For tourists arriving in Malta, it is a short taxi ride away, compared to the transfer within the airport itself. For businessmen going to Gozo on business, it is a fast and painless trip although the three-hour gap between the morning services means it does not save as much time as you would like. However, compared to driving up to Cirkewwa and waiting for the ferry - and the same on the return trip - you save over two hours and get at least half an hour longer in Gozo.