Mozambique’s LAM will operate its first cargo plane from 25 March, a Boeing 737-300F presented today by the company, which has invested three million dollars (2.74 million euros), the director general told Lusa.
“It will mainly be for domestic cargo transport, South Africa and Tanzania, but also other countries at regional level,” explained Theunis Crous, after the public presentation of the LAM Cargo brand and the first aircraft of its kind, exclusively for cargo, at Maputo airport.
“We are facing a new era in LAM’s cargo transport services,” said the director-general, during the ceremony in which the company launched the Cargo and Express Mail services, as well as charters for cargo transport, using the new aircraft, acquired on a leasing basis.
The new Boeing 737-300F has a load capacity of 17 tonnes per flight and joins LAM’s fleet, which also consists of a Boeing 737-700, three Bombardier Q400s, three Bombardier CRJ 900s and three Embraer 145s, all passenger aircraft with a load capacity per flight of between 1.2 and five tonnes.
“The start of this cargo service represented eight months of preparation,” emphasised LAM’s director-general.
Theunis Crous is also the managing director of South Africa’s Fly Modern Ark (FMA), which was appointed by the Mozambican government in April last year to recover LAM, and took over as the airline’s managing director this month.
LAM operates regular passenger flights to the country’s 10 provincial capitals and the Mozambican cities of Vilanculos and Nacala. It also flies regionally to Johannesburg and Cape Town (South Africa), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Harare (Zimbabwe) and Lusaka (Zambia), and plans to launch flights to Lilongwe (Malawi) and Nairobi (Kenya).
LAM has also been flying three times a week to Lisbon since last December, the only intercontinental destination it currently operates.
Lusa
