Mozambique plans investments in aviation sector

Apr 28, 2017: Mozambique Civil Aviation Authority (IACM) has launched a public tender for the investment of domestic, regional and intercontinental routes and asked interested local and foreign companies to for the investment.

After a strong criticism of LAM (Mozambique Airlines) by many of its customers over flight delays and cancellations the president of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi also supported the criticism when he visited LAM on April 13, 2017. Later that day he addressed and extraordinary meeting of the Consultative Council of the Transport Ministry.

The routes covered by the tender include virtually every conceivable domestic route, whether currently flown by LAM or not. If other companies respond to the tender and are accepted, LAM would face competition on its routes from Maputo to the main central and northern cities like Beira, Chimoio, Nampula, Tete, Lichinga and Pemba.

The tender also covers new routes from small airports such as Inhambane and Chimoio to cities which currently cannot be reached without changing planes.

The regional routes in the tender exclude LAM’s most profitable route, which is Maputo-Johannesburg, operated in an arrangement with South African Airlines (SAA). But other South African destinations are covered, included Lanseria (north-west of Johannesburg), Cape Town and Durban.

Other regional routes are currently flown by LAM (but sometimes operated by other airlines) are included in the tender (to Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa). So are routes that have never been flown before, such as Maputo to Mauritius, to Gaberone, to Zanzibar or to Mombasa.

Airlines applying for these routes must hold a license and must have a sales code approved by the IACM.