Air Malta's reliability
 

We are taking a cruise that ends in Malta and trying to pick our flight home to LAX. One possibility has Air Malta connecting with British Air in Heathrow with 2 hours between flights.
Does Air Malta tend to take off and arrive on time? Does 2 hours seem reasonable to change planes in Heathrow, which is a zoo. I guess we are likely to have to change terminals.
The only alternate flights I have seen from Malta to LAX involve 2 changes of plane, which is not very desirable. We could go into San Diego or Santa Ana (John Wayne), but I doubt if that would help.
Thanks.

topping

We have only flown with Air Malta once, from Malta to Catania in Sicily. From memory, the flights were fine, took off on time but they did lose our luggage. We didn't see our bags again for 3 days, could not get any info out of the airline and found out later they had gone all the way to Gatwick (the plane was flying on to the UK). There was another couple on our plane who also lost their luggage and we got the distinct impression in Catania that this was fairly common.

Have you tried looking up connections between flights from Malta (with other airlines as well) to say, Rome then connecting to your home from there?

This website is good for checking which airlines fly where:

http://www.jetnav.co.uk/

Good luck
Kay

Took them once (return trip to malta).

Very average - tight leg room and pretty dire food.

I recall being delayed an hour on departure. On our return we were held up in the early morning jam coming into land at a Heathrow and then had to wait because there was no gate. I recall it meant about another hour delay

Air Malta currently use T4 (The normal BA hub)- I think BA now uses T1 for LA

http://www.britishairways.com/travel...t/public/en_gb

Minimum conmnection time is 75 minutes
http://www.britishairways.com/travel...c/en_gb#dterm3

but this could easily get eaten into by delays and congestion - to be safe I think you might want 3 hours connection time unless your ticketing will be covered if you miss your connection

So far the responses aren't encouraging.
I did look at other airlines, but so far the Malta Air to British Air flight is the only one I found with only one change of planes.

Has anyone else flown air Malta?

We flew Air Malta both ways from Heathrow just a couple of weeks ago; the outbound flight (LHR to MIA) was about an hour late in getting off the ground, but the return leg was trouble free.
Air Malta fly into T4, while BA's flights to LAX doindeed leave from T1, so yes, you will have to change terminals, although you should be able to get Air Malta to check you baggage trough to LAX, which would save some time. That said, I've never tried this particular combination, so I will refrain from commenting on things about which I know nothing.