Mozambique: Flag-carrier announces end of flights between Maputo, Lisbon

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Mozambique: Flag-carrier announces end of flights between Maputo, Lisbon

3:30 CAT | 12 Jan 2021

File photo: Lusa

Mozambique Airlines (LAM) announced on Tuesday the end of the operation linking Maputo and Lisbon due to the new coronavirus pandemic.

“The flight has continued as scheduled but has not been extended due to the situation of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe and other countries in the world,” a LAM note said.

The operation, which was carried out in partnership with the Portuguese company Hi Fly, was reintroduced in July and was scheduled to end officially on 15 January.

“[The operation] has been successfully carried out,” the company’s communiqué said.

A weekly flight, which used an Airbus A330-300, left on Tuesdays from Lisbon for Maputo at 20:00 (local time on departure) and another on Wednesdays from Maputo for Lisbon at 23:55 (local time on departure).

The flight represented the return of the Mozambican flag-carrier to Europe, after almost 10 years, and was described as a sustainable journey, putting LAM in a ‘new network’.

“We look at traffic intelligence and notice that this is the route with the most passengers by far. Not only between Lisbon and Maputo, but also from Maputo to Lisbon and then to Western Europe,” said João Carlos Pó Jorge, the company’s director-general at the time of the announcement.

Mozambique had, by Monday (January 11), a total of 22,334 cases of coronavirus infection, 197 deaths and 17,623 people fully recovered (78%), according to the latest update.

In Portugal, 7,925 people have died out of 489,293 confirmed cases of infection, according to the latest health authority (DGS) bulletin.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 1,934,693 deaths as a result of more than 90.1 million cases of infection worldwide, according to the French agency AFP.

Source: Lusa