LAM launches new cargo aircraft

Maputo, 14 Mar (AIM) – The publicly-owned Mozambique Airlines (LAM) has launched a new cargo aircraft – a Boeing 737-300 F type – with the capacity to carry 17 tonnes, which intends to strengthen the company’s cargo handling capacity by 69 per cent.

According to the Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, Amilton Alissone (MTC), who was speaking on Wednesday, in Maputo, at the ceremony introducing the New Cargo Service, the investment in a cargo aircraft was an important milestone in LAM’s restructuring process.

“We are celebrating this important achievement, convinced that the country and the region now have a new service to improve the mobility of goods and the dispatch of cargo, quickly and safely”, Alissone said.

“With this service, we expect the necessary conditions to be created to make the air cargo transport market in Mozambique more attractive, with improved fares, considering the economies of scale that will be generated with the entry into operations of the freighter that we have the privilege of witnessing publicly today”, he added.

Alissone believed that LAM is moving towards stabilization with an increase in its fleet of aircraft, an increase in domestic frequencies, the opening of new routes and the expansion of the airline.

LAM has been under the management of the South African company Fly Modern Ark (FMA) since last April. The company is responsible for bringing the LAM into profitability, and rescuing it from bankruptcy.

Under the FMA administration, the company resumed direct flights from Maputo to Lisbon, after an interruption of 12 years.

“Despite the good results we are achieving as a result of the reforms underway at LAM, we recognize that the company has not yet reached the desired level of efficiency”, Alissone said, demanding greater commitment and engagement from the company’s staff and directors.

For his part, LAM’s recently appointed general manager, Theunis Crous, emphasized that in LAM’s many years of cargo handling, this is the first time it has made a launch of this kind.

“This aircraft marks an improvement in the capacity and services that LAM offers its customers, the result of intense work carried out over the last eight months”, he said.

LAM currently has 11 other aircraft for cargo transport, including a Boeing 737-700 NG with a hold capacity of five tonnes, three Bombardier Q 400s with a capacity of 1.5 tonnes, three Bombardier CRJ 900s with a capacity of 2.5 tonnes, three Embraer 145s with a capacity of 1.2 tonnes and a Boeing 777-200 ER with a capacity of four tonnes.

(AIM)

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