Review of KM Malta Airlines flight from Luqa to Prague in Economy

Another first for Flight-Report English: the first review of KM Malta Airlines!
This whole trip ended up being fairly random, I thought I would need to be in Rome by mid to late September but then it looked like it would get moved to late September, then Rome didn't happen at all and I just needed to be in Milan before the beginning of October. So there were a few more days to do another short trip after the Tunisia-Malta trip. It took a bit of searching but in the end Czechia seemed like the best option in these few days. Flying to Prague also let me try KM Malta Airlines which I had wanted to do but wouldn't have worked with the other places I'd looked at.
KM Malta Airlines doesn't have either checked or carry-on bags in the lowest fare, so after getting Economy Plus, the third-lowest fare and the lowest with check-in bags, the ticket cost $140. Which now that I look back on it seems like a crazy price for a short European hop, but anyway…

Welcome to Malta International Airport.

When I got to the check-in area there was no line at all, though it filled up while I was there.

That line didn't last too long either.
This is the Schengen check-in area.

Security was quite fast, everything stayed in the bag. It was only a minute or two between check-in and security, and then security and the gate. Quite a small airport.
There was a document check and a long line to enter the gate area, and very little space to sit outside. Lots of people had to sit on the floor. Actually, as people went in, even that area ran out of space quite fast although there were two gates for our flight, 8 and 9.
8 seemed to just be for business class passengers, in 9 there wasn't even enough space for everyont to stand as more people went in.

I don't think there are any jetbridges in Malta, so boarding by bus. The buses came to the gate less than twenty minutes before scheduled departure time and boarding started a few minutes later.

It was a fairly long and very hot bus ride. We went all the way to one end of the airport, then turned around and went almost all the way to the other end.
And here's our plane, 9H-NEO, a 7.4 year old A320neo. It seems like it was originally meant to be delivered to Beijing Capital Airlines but never ended up flying with them. Instead it entered service with Air Malta and was inherited by KM Malta Airlines.

Rows 15 and on boarded from the rear stairs; I was in 16.

KM Malta Airlines has a beautiful livery and the detail of the tail design is incredible.

The logo on the tail is the Maltese Cross, based on the symbol of the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem. The Order of St. John held power in Malta for nearly 270 years before being ousted from the island by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 and eventually fading out of existence after that.

Welcome onboard.

And here are the seats.

My seat. No real headrest on these seats.

Interesting seat design that's a bit different to normal.

Personal lights and air vents, though my vent barely opened.

There were USB-A ports under the seats, 2 pairs for each row of 3 seats. Unfortunately they didn't work at any time during the flight.

It kind of looked like there were drop-down screens, but they never actually came down.

Next to us was D-AIEQ, a Lufthansa A321neo in a special livery.

Pusback was just over twenty minutes late.
I didn't get a chance to look at the seatback pocket's contents earlier so let's do it now.
The lower pocket just had the safety card.

In the upper, there was a magazine, buy-on-board menu including duty free shopping, sickness bag, and a small booklet with some of the special deals and offers.

The buy-on-board service was just after take-off. Other than some of the deals, prices were terrible and there was no point buying anything. I had sandwiches with me to eat anyway.
Nothing was complementary, not even water, so really it was basically like a low-cost carrier.
There was no entertainment of any kind.
Cabin view after the service. It was a surprisingly full flight, I guess KM Malta Airlines benefits from a lack of competition (Ryanair doesn't fly MLA-PRG) because I wouldn't have expected Malta-Prague to be a particularly high-demand route.

Nothing else really happened during the flight and there wasn't anything else to photograph. It feels weird having basically no photos from the actual flight, but what to do.
Before long we had landed in Prague, around 10 minutes behind schedule. People were ready to go and jumped up before the seatbelt sign was turned off.
Some more pictures of the seats.

Last view of our plane.

It was a very short walk from the gate to baggage claim and bags started coming pretty quickly.

The baggage handling is the last remnant of ČSA Czech Airlines, which stopped operating flights of its own nearly a year ago now. It's a shame I was never able to fly them. I had actually briefly looked at going to Europe in October last year and flying into Prague to fly ČSA to Paris, but it never happened (instead I went to Jordan in December on a less than $400 business class fare from India to Thailand and onto Jordan.)
Anyway, this concludes this fairly unevenftul and short flight report. Thanks for reading.