Solenta Aviation says delay in issuing license for domestic flights in Mozambique “is not normal”

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Solenta Aviation says delay in issuing license for domestic flights in Mozambique “is not normal”

5:38 CAT | 01 Jul 2025

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Solenta]

With four aircraft are already waiting in Maputo to provide an alternative to LAM on domestic flights, managing director of Solenta Aviation Mozambique, Brian Holmes , today assessed delays in the issuing of a license to begin operations as “abnormal”.

The managing director of Solenta, a South African company, told Lusa that the carrier “has already met all the technical and operational conditions”, and paid all the fees in May, and is currently waiting for the license.

“What I can say is that it is not normal. It is worse when we do not have any official response explaining why it [the license] has not been issued,” said Holmes.

According to the company director, it is normal for the license to operate to be issued within two or three days after payment, and Solenta is “practically just waiting for that license to be issued”.

Holmes recalled that João de Abreu, the president of the Civil Aviation Institute of Mozambique (IACM), – the entity responsible for issuing the license to begin operations – has already said publicly that Solenta should begin operating domestic flights in June, which has not yet happened.

“And our start dates were mid-June, but so far we still do not have documents issued by the regulator to begin,” the manager reiterated.

Lusa tried to contact the president of the IACM to obtain clarification on the matter, but has not received a response so far.

Currently, Mozambique’s domestic air market only has flights operated by Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM), the state-owned airline, which is undergoing restructuring.

LAM has practically stopped operating international flights, focusing on domestic connections, and is in the process of acquiring new aircraft, after recurrent operational problems in recent years saw cancelled and delayed flights becoming commonplace.

Solenta has four aircraft, all Embraer 145s, for domestic operations in Mozambique, one of which will be used on charter flights by the oil and gas industry. The other three Embraer 145 planes will be used on the Maputo-Tete, Maputo-Beira, Maputo-Quelimane and Maputo-Nampula routes.

At the request of tour operators, another aircraft will be added to fly to Johannesburg in South Africa, and Vilanculos, the tourist destination in Inhambane, southern Mozambique, the company’s general manager explained.

In a market where the state-owned LAM operates under a monopoly regime, Solenta says it does not want to enter into a “price war”, but rather to sell “trustworthy services”, recalling that it has been in the country for 15 years and has already created 120 direct jobs, including pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, sales outlets and service providers, having already hired people to start operating flights in at least five cities in the country.

The company was present on the ground and in the air in Mozambique until 2019, having then suspended operations due to “excess supply” and “accumulated losses”, in a context in which LAM and Ethiopian Airlines both operated domestically.

Source: Lusa