Luqa was built in 1940 and became the heart of Air Headquarters Malta during the siege of 1941–1943. Units formed there included No. 1435 Squadron, raised as a night-fighter unit on 4 December 1941 and made a squadron on 2 August 1942, and No. 683 Squadron, formed on 8 February 1943 from a flight of 69 Squadron to fly photo-reconnaissance Spitfires before it moved to Tunisia that November.

After the war Luqa stayed the RAF’s main Maltese station while Ħal Far and Ta’ Qali ran down: Ħal Far’s last squadron disbanded on 31 August 1967 and Ta’ Qali closed as an active RAF base in 1968. Luqa kept maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft: No. 13 Squadron’s Canberras from 1965 to 1978 and No. 203 Squadron’s Nimrods until the squadron disbanded on 31 December 1977.

The British government chose not to renew its lease on Maltese bases, and Wikipedia records the last departure as a 120 Squadron Nimrod on the morning of 1 April 1979. The civil side had grown alongside the RAF for decades – a passenger terminal opened on 31 March 1958 – and on 25 March 1992 a new terminal replaced it. The former RAF station is now Malta International Airport, with its long runway 13/31 of 3,544 metres.

The Air Wing does not have a base in the usual sense. The AFM places it in the Military Zone on Apron 7 of the airport, and its aircraft share runways and air traffic control with the airlines. AFM headquarters is close by at Luqa Barracks, which also houses the AFM Operations Centre and the Rescue Coordination Centre, RCC Malta.

The wing is organised in four parts: Wing Headquarters for command and control, a Headquarters Squadron for logistics and support, an Operations Squadron that flies the aircraft and a Support Squadron that maintains them. The official site lists its work as maritime surveillance, border control, search and rescue on land and sea, law enforcement, medical evacuation, troop transport and reconnaissance, all on a 24/7 basis.

Its duties grew when the British left. The AFM says it took over search and rescue in 1978, and the Malta Search and Rescue Region it now answers for covers 250,000 square kilometres of sea. That area takes in much of the central Mediterranean between North Africa and Sicily. Malta’s own figures for those missions were not retrieved for this dataset.

Wikipedia dates the Air Wing to the early 1970s. Its early fleet was small and second-hand: three Agusta-Bell 47G-2s that had served with the West German Army and a fourth 47G, an AB 206A, two Breda Nardi NH-500Ms, five Cessna O-1E Bird Dogs and five Bulldog Model 121s. None survives in service. The founding date of 1971 often given for a Helicopter Flight could not be confirmed from an official source reached for this dataset.

Neighbours filled the gaps. Five Alouette III helicopters served the wing, three of them from Libya and two from the Netherlands, according to Wikipedia; the AFM still lists the type on its equipment pages. Italy went further. Under the Italian Military Mission in Malta, Italian crews and AB 212 helicopters flew Maltese search and rescue for more than 40 years. Wikipedia, citing Times of Malta, puts their record at over 15,000 flight hours and over 270 people saved before Italian budget cuts ended the arrangement in 2016.

The good part of this was that Malta had rescue helicopters it could not have afforded alone. The weakness was dependence: when Rome withdrew, the AFM had to carry the whole load with its own new helicopters.

The Air Wing has since settled on two main types. Janes reports that the AFM received its first AgustaWestland AW139 in June 2014; three were in service when a fourth was ordered from Leonardo, with the AFM calling the purchase part of the "ongoing standardisation of the helicopter fleet". Five days earlier it had announced a fourth King Air B200 from Aerodata AG to join three already flying maritime patrol. Wikipedia dates those contracts to late 2025.

In April 2026 MaltaToday reported that the new King Air and AW139 were worth €50 million together and were expected in 2027, and that Air Wing operations had grown by 40% over six years. Brigadier Clinton O’Neill, commander of the AFM, described the approach as building on what the service already had. Wikipedia also lists a single IAI Heron UAV; the official site does not name it, and its ownership arrangement was not confirmed for this dataset.