Mozambique: Flag carrier LAM makes €52M in H1, plans to get four more planes this year

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Mozambique: Flag carrier LAM makes €52M in H1, plans to get four more planes this year

9:29 CAT | 27 Aug 2024

File photo: Rádio Moçambique

In the first half of this year, Mozambique’s flag carrier airline, LAM, earned a total of 3.7 billion meticais (€52 million) and plans to acquire four more aircraft this year, the company’s chairman announced on Monday.

‘It’s a figure that’s a little below what was projected, but if the company earns the same in the second half of the year, we’ll be well above the revenues obtained in the previous year. So we’re forecasting growth of around 19%,’ Américo Muchanga told Mozambican public television on the sidelines of the start of the Maputo International Fair (FACIM), Mozambique’s largest exhibition of goods and services.

In total, the Mozambican national flag carrier transported 330,000 passengers on domestic, regional and intercontinental services during this period, a figure also below its projections, Muchanga said.

‘It was expected that we would have carried around 500,000 passengers in the first half of the year. But I have to say that in terms of our domestic service projections, we carried more than expected,’ he explained.

LAM currently operates with six aircraft and plans to acquire four more this year.

‘We’re thinking of bringing in two more Boeing 737 aircraft and two more Embraer 145 aircraft to reinforce our domestic and regional routes,’ Américo Muchanga said.

LAM operates 12 destinations on the domestic market and flies regularly to Johannesburg, Dar es Salaam, Harare, Lusaka and Cape Town, with Lisbon being the only intercontinental destination.

‘LAM wants to maintain the Maputo-Lisbon route. We’re working on it. We want to operate this route in conditions where it is sustainable and can generate profit, let’s say, operationally,’ he said.

In July this year, a ‘one-off overhaul’ of its largest aircraft (a Boeing 737-700) forced the company to reschedule several flights, with complaints and criticism from several customers.

Américo Muchanga has been chairman of LAM since July, having replaced Theunis Christian de Klerk Crous, who had held the position on an interim basis since February, as part of the removal of João Carlos Pó Jorge and the company’s restructuring process, which is being carried out by Fly Modern Ark (FMA), the South African company hired to recover LAM.

FMA has been managing LAM since April last year, with a restructuring plan underway.

The company’s revitalisation strategy follows years of operational problems related to a reduced fleet and lack of investment, with a record of some incidents, not fatal, associated by experts with poor aircraft maintenance.

During the period of FMA’s management, the South African company denounced schemes to embezzle money at LAM, with losses of almost €3 million, in ticket shops, through automatic payment terminal machines (TPA/POS) that do not belong to the company.

Mozambique’s Central Anti-Corruption Office (GCCC) has opened a case to investigate alleged corruption schemes in ticket sales at the Mozambican airline and in the management of the company’s fleet, and has seized various materials.

‘We have several suspects and some searches and seizures have already been carried out. We are still in the process of investigating, which we cannot detail here for reasons of justice secrecy,’ Romualdo Johnam, spokesman for the GCCC, said on 6 August.

Source: Lusa