Perhaps encouraged by the recent news that the ban on Mozambiquan airlines from entering European airspace may soon be lifted, Mozambique Airlines (LAM) has announced the interruption of its flights from Maputo to Lisbon – but promises that it intends to resume them with its own plane and crew, reports news agency AIM.
LAM relaunched flights to Lisbon in April this year, after a period of 15-years in which only Portuguese Airlines (TAP) flew between the Mozambiquan and Portuguese capitals. But the LAM flights used a Boeing 767 leased from a Portuguese charter service, EuroAtlantic.
The arrangement is known as a “wet lease” – EuroAtlantic supplied the plane, the crew and the insurance. It was this that enabled LAM to evade the European Commission’s blanket ban which prevented all Mozambique-registered airlines from flying in European airspace. But the last of the Lisbon flights using the EuroAtlantic plane took off yesterday (November 22).
Flights to Lisbon, and to other destinations in Europe, Brazil and China, will be guaranteed by a LAM, subsidiary, LAM-International, an autonomous body that is currently being set up, and which will be exclusively responsible for intercontinental operations.
Until Lam-International becomes operational, LAM will rely on its partnership with TAP to fly passengers to Lisbon. TAP will increase the number of its flights on the Maputo-Lisbon route, through a code-sharing arrangement with LAM.
