LAM suspends flights to Lisbon

Maputo, 18 Feb (AIM) – Mozambique Airlines (LAM) announced on Tuesday that it is suspending its only intercontinental flight, between Maputo and Lisbon, with immediate effect.

A LAM press release said that the company is trying to place the 1,080 passengers who have already bought tickets to Lisbon with other airlines. Should this prove impossible, it will refund them.

LAM announced that it has already suspended two loss-making regional routes, between Maputo and Harare and Maputo and Lusaka.

That leaves LAM with just two regional routes – between Maputo and Johannesburg and Maputo and Dar es Salaam. The viability of the recently opened route between Maputo and Cape Town is still under study.

The LAM release says that the company will concentrate on its domestic routes, and only after its domestic position was consolidated would it turn its attentions once again to international flights.

The current LAM Board of Directors took office in January, and immediately looked at the viability of the routes the company was flying. It found that the Maputo-Lisbon route had lost 21 million dollars in little more than a year.

The suspension of the flights to Lisbon, Harare and Lusaka. LAM said, “results from the determination of the company to give a new dynamic to its business in optimising the profitability of its operations and the efficiency of its management”.

It would prioritise domestic flights “banking heavily on the quality of its product and better assistance to the passengers”.

LAM resumed flights to Lisbon in November 2023, when it was being managed by the South African company Fly Modern Ark (FMA). Although the current board is reluctant to criticise its predecessor, it now seems clear that the Maputo-Lisbon flights merely plunged LAM deeper into bankruptcy.

LAM spokesperson Alfredo Cossa told a Maputo press conference on Tuesday that the Lisbon flights had sucked money from the domestic traffic, and this could no longer continue.
(AIM)
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