Mozambique Airlines resume flights to Portugal after 12 years of interruption

Fishing boats sit beneath the skyline of Mozambique's capital Maputo. Picture: REUTERS/Grant Lee Neuenburg/File Photo

Fishing boats sit beneath the skyline of Mozambique's capital Maputo. Picture: REUTERS/Grant Lee Neuenburg/File Photo

Published Dec 13, 2023

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The Mozambique Airlines company (LAM) returns to flying to Portugal after 12 years of interruption.

The inaugural flight took place on Tuesday night, the company said in a statement.

The inaugural flight departed depart from Lisbon, Portugal's capital, to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.

The Minister of Transport and Communications Mateus Magala will preside over the official ceremony on Wednesday in Maputo.

According to the statement, three weekly flights will be carried out using Boeing 777-200, with a capacity for 320 passengers.

Since the opening for ticket sales, LAM has already sold around 12,000 tickets, with reservations until October 2024, according to LAM Restructuring Project Manager, Sergio Matos, quoted by Radio Mozambique, on Tuesday.

In addition to the Maputo-Lisbon route, the Mozambican flag company has new routes in its portfolio that connect Maputo to different points in South Africa, especially Cape Town, according to Matos.

"The re-establishment of the Mozambique Airlines flight to Portugal will boost the tourism in the country.

“Facilitating mobility for tourists to enter the country is the key to the development of the sector," he said.

The airline was hit with tragedy in 2013 when a flight en route to Angola crashed in a game park in northeast Namibia, killing all 34 people on board.

Namibian Police Force Deputy Commissioner Willy Bampton told Reuters the burned out wreckage of the aircraft was found in the Bwabwata National Park, near the borders with Angola and Botswana.