Hi Fly Malta

Is Hi Fly Malta safe?

Yes for most travellers, though it is one of the older fleets you can end up on in Europe. Hi Fly Malta has never had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft, it holds a European certificate, and it is audited under IATA's IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary programme. Against that, its A330s and A340s average about 21 years, a 2023 turbulence encounter broke a crew member's leg, and in 2024 one of its A330s lost an engine and its cabin pressure after leaving Algiers. We score it 78, three points below its Portuguese sister Hi Fly.

Few passengers choose Hi Fly Malta. They find it on the boarding pass of a flight they booked with someone else.

Who flies with Hi Fly Malta?

The Hi Fly group got its Maltese certificate in 2013, and today most of its wide-body jets fly on it. In October 2026 the company's fleet page lists nine Airbus A330s and four A340-300s, all registered in Malta. The company flies under the ICAO code HFM and the call sign MOONRAKER. It has no IATA code of its own: IATA lists it under 3L*, a code shared with Air Arabia Abu Dhabi.

Its clients in 2026 alone included Etihad, which used A330-200 9H-HFK between Abu Dhabi and Lisbon; Air Seychelles on Paris to Mahé; and Venezuela's Laser Airlines between Caracas and Madrid. Earlier it flew for TAAG Angola, Air Algérie and Norwegian. It also flies tour operator charters to Brazil, repatriation flights, and each southern summer a season to Wolf's Fang, a blue-ice runway in Antarctica, where it landed the first A330 in December 2025. Hi Fly says its aircraft served 74 airports in 41 countries in the first half of 2026.

If your booking says "operated by Hi Fly" and the registration on a tracker starts with 9H-, this page is the record that applies.

The 2023 turbulence and the 2024 emergency descent

On 23 March 2023, A330-300 9H-HFA was flying TAAG's DT652 from Luanda to Lisbon with 254 passengers when it hit severe clear-air turbulence at 38,000 feet over Nigeria. The meal service was under way; trolleys were thrown against the ceiling. Eight passengers and two cabin crew were hurt, and a cabin crew member broke a leg. The captain continued to Lisbon, about five hours away, where three people went to hospital. Clear-air turbulence cannot be seen on radar, and nothing published so far points to a crew error. Because one injury was serious, ICAO's definitions make it an accident; we count it, but lightly, as we do for turbulence injuries at other airlines.

On 22 September 2024, A330-200 9H-HFH was climbing to cruise about 200 nautical miles east of Algiers as Air Algérie AH3018 to Istanbul when a FADEC fault led the crew to shut down an engine, declare Mayday and descend; the cabin then lost pressure and the oxygen masks dropped. The aircraft returned safely to Algiers and stayed on the ground for days. Algeria's authorities are investigating it as a serious incident. We have seen no findings yet.

The other event in our 10-year window is minor: in June 2019 an A340-300 flying Norwegian's Orlando to London Gatwick service lost its primary hydraulic system and returned to Orlando after dumping fuel.

One event we do not count. On 24 June 2026 two strong earthquakes hit Venezuela while A330-300 9H-HFI was boarding Laser flight QL2920 at Caracas. The aircraft was reported damaged, nobody was hurt, and about 40 Portuguese TAP and Hi Fly crew members were stuck in Caracas for days. A natural disaster at the gate says nothing about how the airline flies.

Old jets, European rules

Transport Malta's Civil Aviation Directorate issues the certificate under the same EASA rules that apply in Germany or France, Malta has the FAA's Category 1FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary rating, and Hi Fly Malta is an IATA member, which requires IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary. Oversight scores 90.

The fleet is the weak point. Build years range from 1997 for the oldest A340 to 2017 for the newest A330, and most of the A330s date from 2005 to 2009. The A340-300 is out of production and has four engines to maintain. Old aircraft are not unsafe when they are maintained properly, but they break down more, and an engine failure like the one at Algiers is the kind of event an ageing fleet makes more likely.

Before you fly Hi Fly Malta

• Check the aircraft, not just the airline. A flight tracker shows the registration a day or two before departure; 9H-HF, 9H-TQ, 9H-SUN, 9H-SOL, 9H-MFS and 9H-ALC are Hi Fly Malta jets.
• Keep your belt fastened when seated. The 2023 injuries happened during the meal service in clear air; a fastened belt is the best protection against turbulence you cannot see coming.
• Know your rights stay with the airline you booked. Compensation and rebooking go through Etihad, TAAG or whichever airline sold the ticket, not Hi Fly.

How we scored it

Oversight (90) and an accident record with no crash and one turbulence accident (86) carry the score. Incidents (76) reflect the 2024 engine failure with depressurisation. The fleet (54) is the oldest part of the picture, and the environment (60) covers short-notice work from Antarctica to Caracas and the Gulf. Overall 78.