Malta International Airshow 2024 Ends with 55,000 Visitors and a Roar of Pride

In pictures: Malta International Airshow draws to a close after weekend of thunder, pride and pastizzi-fuelled crowds

Ħaġar Qim echoed to the sound of afterburners on Sunday evening as the 2024 Malta International Airshow signed off with a final, gravity-defying roll from the Italian Frecce Tricolori, their green-white-red smoke trails drifting out over the same limestone cliffs that once sheltered Bronze Age temple builders. From the bastions of Valletta to the fishing boats of Marsaxlokk, heads tilted skyward one last time, the island briefly united by jet fuel and nostalgia.

For two days Luqa’s normally sleepy airport became the nation’s living room. Families spread picnic blankets between the taxiways, toddlers clutched cardboard model aircraft handed out by RAF crew, and nannas fanned themselves with programmes that doubled as makeshift fans against the September glare. By 18:00 Sunday, when the last turboprop coughed to silence, organisers estimated 55,000 had passed through the gates—roughly one in ten Maltese residents—making it the best-attended civilian airshow in Europe this year.

The numbers only tell half the story. Walk the flight-line and you caught snippets of Maltese life in stereo: “Mela, did you see the Thunderbirds? My boy wants to enlist now,” laughed Darren from Żabbar, steering his son past a vintage Spitfire whose Rolls-Royce Merlin engine still smells faintly of burnt Castrol—the same scent that once filled the skies above Grand Harbour in 1942. Nearby, two elderly Qormi men swapped wartime memories with a Canadian Hercules pilot, their conversation hopping from English to Maltese to hand-gestured aviation jargon without missing a beat.

Local businesses felt the uplift literally. “We ran out of rabbit fenkata by two o’clock,” grinned Sylvana Pace, whose food truck normally tours village festas. “Americans wanted ħobż biż-żejt, Italians asked for keto options—so we improvised with ftira topped with burrata. Fusion, Maltese style.” Across the tarmac, pop-up stalls from Gozo cheesemakers sold 800 kilos of ġbejniet; the honey-stall from Siġġiewi took pre-orders until Christmas. Even the airport Costa ran out of pastizzi, a first in franchise history, according to staff who dispatched emergency runs to nearby Rabat bakeries.

Culturally, the show doubles as a mirror. This year’s theme—“Guardians of the Mediterranean”—placed Maltese forces centre-stage: an AW139 search-and-rescue helicopter performed a mock sea-winch while a patrol boat from Maritime Squadron Section Delta sped across the adjoining bay, reminding onlookers that the same crews spent last August pulling 95 migrants from a foundering dinghy. When the Algerian C-130 Hercules taxied past, applause rippled through the crowd—acknowledgement of cross-border cooperation rarely mentioned in headlines but woven into daily island life.

Education got a look-in too. Students from Malta College of Arts built a 3-D-printed drone displayed under a Union Jack canopy, their lecturer proudly explaining how composite materials developed for Airbus wings are now being trialled for traditional Maltese fishing boats—an unlikely bridge between high tech and luzzu tradition. “We want kids to see aerospace as something that happens here, not in Toulouse or Seattle,” said Dr Monique Calleja, whose Women in Aviation stand saw queues of teenage girls clamouring for selfies with local airline pilots.

By sunset, as ground crews tugged the last tethered barrier, the tarmac felt oddly quiet—like a village square after the band marches home. Cleaner Marisa Vella swept popcorn boxes stamped with Slovakian MiG insignia and reflected: “In three hours this will be an airport again, but tonight it still belongs to us.” She’s right. The Airshow may be a transient circus of aluminium and adrenaline, yet its real payload is communal memory: the toddler who will forever associate the smell of kerosene with Grandpa’s shoulders, the elderly man who saluted when the Spitfire passed, the teenager who realised Malta is not too small to dream at Mach 1.

Next year the planes will return, schedules permitting. Until then, the island folds the spectacle away like a cherished festa handkerchief—already anticipating the next roar above the limestone rooftops.