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LAM Opens Tender for New Aircraft

LAM Opens Tender for New Aircraft

State carrier Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM) went ahead this Friday, 31 January, with a procedure to try to contract the supply of Embraer ERJ190 and Boeing 737-700 aircraft, according to a notice consulted by Lusa.

The agency says that the tender involves the submission of expressions of interest for the supply of aircraft of these two models, by national or foreign companies or consortia and will run until 7 February.

A source from the airline explained to Lusa that this procedure does not have, at this stage, quantities of aircraft to be contracted, a decision that will depend on the proposals submitted in this tender.

LAM operates 12 destinations on the domestic market. Regionally, it flies regularly to Johannesburg, Dar es Salaam, Harare, Lusaka and Cape Town, with Lisbon being the only intercontinental destination, but the company has faced successive operational problems.

Meanwhile, last week the airline chose Marcelino Gildo Alberto as chairman of the board of directors, the third appointment to lead the company in less than a year.

According to a statement from LAM, the decision was taken at the company’s extraordinary general meeting and came into effect on 22 January, as did the departure of Américo Muchanga, who had led the airline since July 2024, but who was sworn in as Minister of Communications and Digital Transformation.

This is the third new executive leader of LAM in almost 11 months, replacing Américo Muchanga, who in turn had replaced Theunis Crous, from Fly Modern Ark (FMA), the South African company hired to recover the Mozambican company.

The South African held the interim position of managing director of LAM – until then the chairman of LAM’s Board of Directors was a non-executive, which has since been changed – from February to July 2024.

Marcelino Gildo Alberto previously held the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of state-owned Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), but was dismissed in July 2024.

The contract between FMA and LAM ended on 12 September 2024 and had been in force since April 2023, when the South African company was called in to implement a strategy to revitalise the company after years of operational problems related to a reduced fleet and a lack of investment, with a record of some incidents, not fatal, associated by experts with inefficient aircraft maintenance.

Meanwhile, the company returned the Boeing 737-300 cargo plane to Indonesia this month after a year without operating it, due to the lack of national certification and recognition of the aircraft’s modifications by the manufacturer, the aviation regulator previously confirmed.

‘It turned out that not all the documents required for this type of certification were complete,’ said the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Civil Aviation Institute of Mozambique (IACM), the regulatory authority, João de Abreu. He also explained that the cargo aeroplane never operated in Mozambique due to the lack of national certification, having been the subject of modifications to a passenger aeroplane without the due knowledge of the manufacturer, who was also not notified.

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