The newest junior minister in Prime Minister Robert Abela’s Cabinet, Parliamentary Secretary Chris Bonett, is continuing to ruffle feathers – not through his work but because of incidents involving his conduct on private holidays.

Just a few days after being exposed as having used his official taxpayer-funded car to take his family on holiday to Sicily, Bonett has once again found himself at the brunt of complaints, this time from fellow passengers on an Air Malta flight.

On Wednesday 7 December, the eve of a public holiday, passengers on board KM 116 waiting to depart for London were told to vacate the pre-booked seats they had paid for in advance. They were instead given other seats in different sections of the flight’s economy class.

When asked for the reason behind the manoeuvres, Air Malta staff told relocated passengers they had been given instructions to change the pre-booked seating arrangement to make way for “a VIP” who would be boarding the flight.

To their surprise, the seething passengers realised their original seats had been reassigned to Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds Chris Bonett and his family.

With passengers protesting about the situation, which affected around 10 of them who had to change seats to accommodate Bonett, Air Malta staff told aggrieved passengers the junior minister had insisted that his family all be seated in the same row.

In a social media post about the incident, independent political candidate Arnold Cassola, who also received the same information, said questions he sent to Air Malta about the incident were never answered.

One passenger who was on the flight remarked, “This sheer arrogance is even worse as Bonett was traveling on a holiday and not on some government business. If he wanted to be comfortable, he should have paid business class for his family, as he does when he travels on the government’s expense for some conference or other.”

Bonett’s latest incident comes shortly after his trip to Sicily with his ministerial BMW was revealed by The Shift.

While Cassola has already asked the Standards Commissioner to investigate that trip, Bonett has so far refused to reply to questions about who paid for his catamaran tickets and the fuel costs when he used his official government-assigned vehicle for his family vacation in Sicily.

Known for his staunch loyalty to Prime Minister Robert Abela, Bonett had already made headlines before he entered Parliament last March.

In 2017, when placed by former disgraced prime minister Joseph Muscat as acting SportsMalta CEO, Bonett issued some €14 million in direct orders for the development of the Ta’ Kandja shooting range. The NAO had singled out his actions for criticism but failed to mention him by name.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of those direct orders was construction magnate Bonnici Brothers, which, incidentally, happens to have been a client of Abela’s private law firm. The Prime Minister was also in business with the company’s managing director.