Review of Tunisair Express flight from Tunis to Luqa in Economy

Looks like this is the first English flight report on Tunisair Express!
 While Tunisair did have quite reasonable fares to Italy, rather than spending more time in Italy it made sense to go to Malta which was a new country that I had been planning to go to for quite a while.
Tunisair Express seems to be quite distinct from Tunisair, you can't book flights from one airline on the other and they provide different services etc. Tunisair Express mostly operates domestic flights, plus a few short haul internationals like Malta with a massive fleet of one active ATR 72-600.
This flight cost $145, booked on booking.com including checked bags which are free on Tunisair Express.

Well, this was one the craziest flight experiences I've ever had!

This flight was - orginally - pretty much perfect. It left in the late morning (not too early) from Tunis, getting to Malta in time for lunch and a full afternoon that day. Then the day before the flight, booking.com sent a notification that the flight had been changed from 10:30 AM on the 21st to just after midnight that night, which completely messed up everything.
Because it wasn't an EU airline there was no EU261 compensation, and the options from booking.com were a refund or continuing with the new flight. There were no better flights to get to Malta, unfortunately, so there wasn't really any choice.
Tunisair Express was very unhelpful as well, they didn't reply to the phone numbers and the only way to contact them was to physically go to their office in the airport. They weren't helpful there either, the only thing they could do was provide a hotel but that would also require going to the airport again in the morning. No offer of any other type of compensation besides transport between the airport and the hotel. Extremely frustrating, it meant basically losing a day in Malta and going from perfect timings to terrible timings, they also changed the aircraft from their sole ATR 72-600, which I'd wanted to fly, to a Tunisair A320. I guess that was better than the leased Windrose Airlines A319s they were using most days, despite scheduling the ATR.
Tunisair Express continued sellling tickets on their website for the original departure up to at least around 8:00 AM on the 21st, despite the flight being cancelled. They also only sent a notification about the time change hours after booking.com did.
Besides all of that terrible communication, the updated flight didn't show up anywhere. Not on the Tunis Airport website, not on Flightradar… and then shortly before I had to leave for the airport, it disappeared from the Tunisair Express website as well. I did eventually find it on the Malta Airport website where it said it was delayed.
Finally, I got to the airport for the 12:30 departure. I'm sure nothing else crazy will happen on this flight, right…?

Tunisair Express check-in is on the ground floor, the same level as arrivals, unlike most airlines which are on the higher level. Upstairs looked much nicer, this was just a small, crowded room and there was a fairly long line for check-in with only two counters open.

And on the screen, it showed the flight was delayed another hour to 1:30 AM. The flight finally showed up on flightradar, estimated to have an actual departure of 1:40.

It took half an hour to get to the front of the line.

And this was when the crazy bit started.
Check-in was going pretty normally, they mentioned the flight was full though I'm not sure how since all these days they were selling tickets for an ATR 72 operating it and it was actually an A320. Unlike Tunisair people in London they didn't care about the carry on being overweight.
Then one of the staff there who looked like he may have been a manager said "Catania after Malta." The standard routing is Tunis-Malta-Catania with the same flight all the way to Catania, so was there a comma there ("Catania, after Malta") like Malta is later now? Or did he think I was going to Catania? He also didn't know English well so it was confusing.
The lady actually doing the check-in said no, it's Malta first. Then her colleague at the next counter said no, it's Catania first. None of them seemed to know when arrival time in Malta was and the first man said to go upstairs for departures.
It was almost funny at this point though it was really messing up the Malta trip, they literally didn't even know where the plane was going or when it was arriving. The Malta Airport page had a 3:30 AM arrival which meant it had to go straight there and Flightradar just had Tunis-Malta without even mentioning Catania.

At least I got to see the nice upstairs more closely.

There was a document check to get into the departures area. No line, but everyone had to go up and down through the empty lanes to get there.

There was an average sized immigration and security line, didn't take too long.
By then Flightradar had the Malta-Catania flight as well so all the scheduling suggested it would still be Malta first. The whole thing was so weird, I've never had this kind of experience before, I literally didn't know where the plane was going. Signage was all Malta and the normal schedule was of course Malta first but the check in agents had said Catania…
Nothing was happening at the gate for a while so it was really unclear what the flight status was. Luckily there was a nice cafe to wait in.

I happened to check the screen and then - another hour delay! 2:30 departure now.

I moved to the gate area eventually just in case something did happen. Thankfully there was plenty of space.

A bit after 1 AM, a lady (who I later learned had apparently been waiting there since the morning for the original 10:30 AM departure) started yelling and swearing in multiple languages, first just randomly generally aimed at Tunisair Express, and then going around to different people and talking to them. Around fifteen minutes after she started she walked off with her bag, but did come back later.
Not a single member of Tunisair or Tunisair Express was anywhere to be seen, it was just all the passengers sitting there and every now and then an announcement in French which I couldn't hear very clearly anyway. And of course there had never been any explanation for the delay. Very annoying that there EU261 wasn't applicable for this flight, otherwise they'd probably owe me 500 Euros or so by this point.
Around 1:30, someone in a uniform came, fiddled with the door for a few seconds, talked to another uniformed person, and then disappeared.
Around 1:40 people started queuing up though I'm not sure for what. The screen maintained that we would somehow still be departing at 2:30.

 A crew arrived a few minutes later but looked like they were settling down for a long wait. Some more staff showed up and started giving water to people that went to the front for it.

The crew went through the gate by 1:55.
The lady started yelling again, this time in English. It was actually pretty entertaining and her points were mostly true, she was acting out the staff drinking coffee peacefully and laughing about the situation and the police eating croissants. She was slapping chairs and making a lot of noise, it was really starting to look like she wouldn't be allowed on even if it did take off. She was shouting about how all they did was give water and she has water at home, she has work in the morning, and there was no communication even from Tunisair Express about the delay. Then she ranted for a bit about how terrible Tunisia as a country is. Apparently she paid 30 Euros for a can of Coke zero. She was really mad about the water, there was a lot of swearing and she managed to keep shouting without breaks for about 10 minutes.
She did some more acting, this time of a worker smoking while normal people aren't allowed to smoke in the airport.
When it got to 2:30, which was meant to be departure time after the first 3 delays, she led people in clapping and someone even joined in with a squeaky toy. Someone saw a staff member in the distance and started yelling and whistling at them, people were getting very angry. The screen still had a 2:30 departure time.
There was another round of screaming, clapping, and whistling when more staff people were spotted, and as they walked by to the gate there were even more people joining in, it was really getting crazy. I've never seen such an angry reaction by so many people. It really seemed like a riot, it even felt a bit unsafe.

Finally, at 2:38 AM, after some 50 people crowded around the front and of which at least a dozen were yelling at the staff, boarding started.
The man checking the boarding passes just totally ignored the question of why there had been a delay.
It was a remote stand, so boarding by bus.

The lady at the bottom of the stairs said the delay was because of "technical problems."
And, finally, there it is!

TS-ITB, a 14.8 year old A320-200 which flew for Gulf Air until joining Tunisair in July 2023. Yep - a normal Tunisair plane, not Tunisair Express. I think Tunisair Express is actually banned from operating flights of its own to the European Union as of earlier this year, a fun fact which I did not know before this trip.

The crew onboard were different from those who had gone on earlier, I think the others may have been for the (pretty cool) Mauritania Airlines flight to Nouakchott, which had begun its journey in Medina of all places.
One of the flight attendents also said that there were technical problems and they were with this plane specifically, which based on flight history looks like a blatant lie but who knows.
Here are the business class seats.

And a bit of economy.

The drama wasn't over yet. The man who had been doing the most yelling after the main lady started saying something about free seating.
A flight attendent said, "No, there's no free seating. Who told you that?"
"Your colleague."
"What colleague?"
He pointed her out and she came over and said that yes it was indeed free seating. Then it was just a scramble for seats, it was really a mess and I'm not sure why they couldn't have assigned seats.
Anyway, I ended up in row 5 which ended up being good since my assigned seat was in row 31… more on that later.

My seat had a broken coat hook, the other seats had an unbroken one.

The others also seemed to have the magazines and safety card etc while mine just the sickness bag.

Personal lights and vents.

There was a memory of screens from the plane's days in Gulf Air.

The seats had headrests, but they were strapped down and so not adjustable.
Some people with economy tickets had sat in business and needed to be moved back so the seating arrangement was quite chaotic and probably delayed the departure even more.
There was still no confirmation that the flight was going first to Malta and not Catania but I thought the guy at check-in was probably just wrong or confused.
Announcements were in Arabic and I think Maltese? No English or French so I had no idea what was being said.
We finally pushed back at 3:28, just short of 17 hours after the original departure.
The first, and as it turned out, only announcement in English was saying that we'd be taking off shortly, and soon we did without any more eventful incidents.
There was no service in economy or business. I used the bathroom and on the way checked the seat numbers, they only went up to 27 so I'm not sure how they assigned me a seat in row 31.
Most people tried to get a bit of sleep.

After around 20 minutes in the air they announced something, the seatbelt sign was turned on and it felt like we might have started the descent.
It was actually insane, we were landing but I didn't even know for sure 100% where we were landing. From the little bit I could see it looked like Malta, but I'd never been to Malta before so I couldn't be certain. Then we landed and all the Ryanair and KM Malta Airlines planes confirmed that it was indeed Malta! As did the Arabic announcement a minute later which mentioned Malta.

Interestingly enough, they thanked people for flying Tunsair without mentioning Tunisair Express.
The lights had been off for landing and most of the flight, and were turned on when we came to a stop. It was a few minutes until the doors were opened.
I got a few terrible pictures of the cabin on the way out.

It was airstairs and a bus again, with good views of our plane on the way out. Almost everyone got out in Malta it seemed, most people weren't continuing to Catania.

It was a short bus trip to the terminal and reasonably quick immigration.
Not many non-Schengen arrivals.

It was a bit tough to find which baggage claim to go to since I struggled to find the flight out of all the arrivals at this busy hour… joking, there was just one flight.

And bags were already arriving.

After that, there were more issues with the rental car, but I think I can end the flight report here.