Malta might have the Midas touch when it comes to attracting aircraft operators but its aviation chief Charles Pace told a packed CJI conference there is no “magic formula”.

The tiny Mediterranean country is like an island in the stream of European aviation with a rapid expansion to more than 900 air craft and 50 AOCs – a mix of business jet operators, ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance) providers and airlines.

“It's just that many other countries are not interested, basically,” said Pace, director general of Civil Aviation for Transport Malta speaking at our inaugural CJI Malta conference in June.

“If you look at the way some civil aviation associations operate, they’re not really interested in smaller AOCs. We see countries who, if you go to them and say, ‘I want a small AOC for four or five business jets’, they just don’t care.

“Malta being who we are, we’re small. We need small businesses. We’re interested in an AOC with three aircraft. It provides jobs. That’s the sole feature the government has asked us to do, provide jobs.”

The sentiment across the packed one-day conference was that Malta’s attraction includes tax breaks for operators, double-tax treaties, civil aircraft law, English regulations and a regulator that wants to grow its business aviation industry.

Comlux was the first business jet operator in Malta when it moved there in 2007. “At first, we ran it together in parallel with our historical AOC. At the end, we closed the AOC in 2011 and we brought the whole fleet to Malta,” said Andrea Zanetto, CEO, Comlux. “We did not ever regret it. It was a simple combination of finding a place where we could run the business faster.”