Mozambique Airlines (LAM) resumes weekly flights between Maputo and Lisbon on Tuesday.

The flights will use an Airbus A330-300 leased from the Portuguese company Hi-fly. The plane can carry 270 passengers.

According to the LAM director-general, Po Jorge, cited in a LAM statement “With the re-establishment of intercontinental flights operated by LAM, we intend once again to carry the name of Mozambique, and our colours, to Lisbon and later to the markets of India, China and Brazil, with a solid and sustainable company. The important thing is that we recognise that we are capable”.

Jorge was sure that the partnership with Hi-Fly “will create in our company and among our Mozambican staff the necessary capacity to manage a project on this scale”.

He claimed that LAM “is rigorously controlling costs so that it can offer a competitive tariff, and guarantee that the costs are covered”.

One serious obstacle to the resumption of flights to and from Maputo was an insistence that all passengers, of whatever nationality, must request authorisation from the Minister of the Interior.

Fortunately for the future of Mozambican tourism the Ministry of the Interior dropped this scheme for a travel permit last week.