Hi Fly Malta is a

Maltese Maltese may refer to: * Someone or something of, from, or related to Malta * Maltese alphabet * Maltese cuisine * Maltese culture * Maltese language, the Semitic language spoken by Maltese people * Maltese people, people from Malta or of Malte ...

charter airline Air charter is the business of renting an entire aircraft (i.e., chartering) as opposed to individual aircraft seats (i.e., purchasing a airline ticket, ticket through a traditional airline). Regulation Charter – also called air taxi or ad h ...

based at

Malta International Airport Malta International Airport ( mt, L-Ajruport Internazzjonali ta' Malta, ) is the only airport in Malta and it serves the whole of the Maltese Islands. It is located on the Malta (island), island of Malta, southwest of the Maltese capital Vallett ...

and a subsidiary of the

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charter airline Hi Fly.

History

Hi Fly Malta started operations in early 2013 with one

Airbus A340-600 The Airbus A340 is a long-range, wide-body passenger airliner that was developed and produced by Airbus. In the mid-1970s, Airbus conceived several derivatives of the A300, its first airliner, and developed the A340 quadjet in parallel wit ...

formerly operated by

Virgin Atlantic Virgin Atlantic, a trading name of Virgin Atlantic Airways Limited and Virgin Atlantic International Limited, is a British airline with its head office in Crawley, England. The airline was established in 1984 as British Atlantic Airways, and w ...

with one more pre-owned on order. The airline had also applied for an

Air Operators Certificate An air operator's certificate (AOC) is the approval granted by a civil aviation authority (CAA) to an aircraft operator to allow it to use aircraft for commercial purposes. This requires the operator to have personnel, assets, and system in pla ...

and planned to start scheduled operations to destinations in

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. During 2015, all of the airlines' aircraft had been stored and in May 2015 the A340-600s were sold to Al Naser Airlines, a front company for

Mahan Air Mahan Airlines, operating under the name Mahan Air ( fa, هواپیمایی ماهان, Havâpeymâyi-ye Mâhân), is a privately owned Iranian airline based in Tehran, Iran. It operates scheduled domestic services and international flights to ...

. Hi Fly Malta was reactivated on September with the re-registration of one A340-300 from the parent Portuguese company on the Maltese Business Registry and a second A340-300 was added in early 2016 that had previously flown for

Sri Lankan Airlines SriLankan Airlines (formerly known as Air Lanka) is the flag carrier of Sri Lanka and a member airline of the Oneworld airline alliance. It is currently the largest airline in Sri Lanka by number of aircraft and destinations and was launched ...

.Hi Fly supplies A340 for commercial zero-gravity flights
/ref> Several former

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A340-300 frames were added in 2017. In the summer of 2018, Hi Fly became the first airline to order secondhand

Airbus A380 The Airbus A380 is a large wide-body airliner that was developed and produced by Airbus. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and only full-length double-deck jet airliner. Airbus studies started in 1988, and the project was annou ...

aircraft, placing an order for two aircraft. In autumn 2017, Hi Fly, in a sponsorship of the

Turn the Tide on Plastic ''Turn the Tide on Plastic'' is a Volvo Ocean 65 yacht. As ''Team Vestas Wind'', she finished seventh in the 2014–15 Volvo Ocean Race skippered by Chris Nicholson (sailor), Chris Nicholson. Following the race, the boat was refitted for the 2017� ...

yacht team in the

Volvo Ocean Race The Ocean Race is a yacht race around the world, held every three or four years since 1973. Originally named the Whitbread Round the World Race after its initiating sponsor, British brewing company Whitbread, in 2001 it became the Volvo Ocean Rac ...

, painted one of its A330s in a livery similar to the yacht, with the port side bearing a dirty oceans livery and the starboard side a clean oceans livery. On 19 July 2018, its newly painted Airbus A380, registered as 9H-MIP, arrived at the

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, carrying the Save the Coral Reefs livery. Hi-Fly's A380 saw a brief lease to

Norwegian Long Haul Norwegian Long Haul AS was a division of Norwegian Air Shuttle that operated long-haul flights between Europe, Asia, and North America with an all-Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet. Norwegian Long Haul was registered in Dublin, Ireland, and was mana ...

in August 2018, which operated the aircraft following engine problems with its Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet. Norwegian leased the A380 again in late 2018 to help deal with the passenger backlog as a result of the

Gatwick Airport drone incident Between 19 and 21 December 2018, hundreds of flights were cancelled at Gatwick Airport near London, England, following reports of drone sightings close to the runway. With 140,000 passengers and 1,000 flights affected, it was the biggest disrup ...

. In July 2020, following the downturn of passenger flight traffic resulting from the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, the A380 was reconfigured for use as a freight carrier, with most of its seats removed. In November 2020, the company announced that the A380 will be retired at the end of its three-year lease period. On 17 December 2020, the A380 made its final flight to

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...

. One A319 was chartered to the defunct Brazilian Itapemirim Transportes Aéreos. In November 2021, it landed at

Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport Rio or Río is the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Maltese word for "river". When spoken on its own, the word often means Rio de Janeiro, a major city in Brazil. Rio or Río may also refer to: Geography Brazil * Rio de Janeiro * Rio do Sul, a ...

to be transformed in regular passenger carrier at TAP Hangar, but this never happened. The license changed to PS-SIL was changed back to 9H-XFW and after 3 months in Brazil, was scheduled to fly back to Europe.

Destinations

Hi Fly Malta has no scheduled destinations. Its planes operate on a

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the rec ...

and ACMI basis. One of its planes was to have been reconfigured for

Swiss Space Systems Swiss Space Systems (S3) was a company that planned to provide orbital launches of small satellites and manned sub-orbital spaceflights. The company was based in Payerne in western Switzerland, near Payerne Air Base, where it planned to build a s ...

prior to its liquidation, and retained a black livery with the Swiss Space Systems logo on the stabilizer prior to its retirement, while all other frames are unmarked except for registration.

Fleet

Current

Hi Fly (Save the Coral Reefs Livery), 9H-HIP, Airbus A380-841 (49579897746)

As of October 2022, the Hi Fly Malta fleet consists of the following aircraft:

Former

References

External links

*
Official website
{{Portalbar, Malta, Aviation Airlines of Malta Airlines established in 2013 2013 establishments in Malta