Review of LAM Mozambique flight from Johannesburg to Maputo in Economy

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Hello and welcome to another Flight Report!

This is the penultimate FR of my trip to South Africa and will cover the first leg of my journey back to Europe. If you've read the first FR in this series (won't blame you if you didn't, it was ages ago), you'll know that I flew in on LAM Mozambique and their only long haul route from Maputo to Lisbon. I'll be taking that flight back however this will cover the flight to Maputo. 

Now this flight was anything but routine. I had a ton of schedule changes before the flight, but I'll save that story for my next FR on the long haul, mainly because that flight caused the schedule changes. 

As for price, I paid €345 for LIS-MPM-JNB roundtrip, which was a special promotional fare when the airline first launched this route. It's a great price, especially for a small airline like LAM but I'm not too sure if all the stress was worth it… 

I aim to offset all of my CO2 emissions from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard.

Video report

Here's the video version of this FR, it's got pretty much the same thing content-wise. 

Johannesburg O.R. Tambo International Airport (JNB)

Yes, a record… like… 5th review on JNB?? I honestly know this airport better than Heathrow or Gatwick at this point haha. 

Another photo of international arrivals in the middle of the airport between the domestic and international terminals. 

I just realized that despite reviewing JNB so many times, I never bothered to show the viewing deck so here it is. 

It's pretty awesome since you get an amazing view of both the domestic and international terminals. 

Yes! That is an Air Seychelles A320 forming 50% of the airline's entire jet fleet! Sadly the airline had to downsize during their restructuring in 2018, returning their entire fleet of A330s (okay, it's only 2… but it's a huge decision for the small airline.

In case it isn't obvious, I'm a massive fan of the airline (yeah, a weird thing to be a fan of, I know) but I love their livery and Seychelles' flag in general. I'd love to go there one day, especially as I like to visit obscure and remote places (and it doesn't get more obscure and remote than some tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean). 

Anyway, enough of me going crazy over a tiny airline… let's continue with the FR. 
 
Here are some of the shops and restaurants landside. This airport is like a huge mall with all the restaurants (which includes a food court), especially in the landside area. 

You can see the check-in area ahead. As I mentioned in my last FR, check-in is restricted to ticket holders only. It's quite odd since this is only a thing in the international terminal. There are no ticket checks in the domestic terminal at all. 

And here are the check-in desks. It's fairly quiet as most long-haul flights depart in the evening, a couple of hours away. 

Check-in, security and immigration took around 10 minutes, and here's the airside area. 

Departures for the afternoon. It's mainly short/medium haul flights. 

View of the apron with an Ethiopian A350-900 (ET-ATR) heading back to Addis Ababa (ADD). 

Photo of the duty-free area. It's those generic duty-free stores with the same stuff found around the world. 

Another photo of the apron with an SAA A320 heading to Windhoek (WDH) and a TAAG Boeing 777-300ER heading to Luanda (LAD) 

As I mentioned before, there are 4 lounges available with Dragonpass. I looked at the Bidvest Premier Lounge last time and this time we'll have a look at the Aspire Lounge. It's very quiet (probably because of the lack of long hauls so early) and there's a decent selection of food on the counter in the distance. 

Being a Q400, our flight will depart board from a bus gate (again). Pretty much all international narrow bodies depart out of here unless you're one of the very lucky SAA A320s or Airlink E-jets. 

The flight

Boarding started 30 minutes late due to the late arrival of our plane and here's a very nice view of the Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 getting towed back to the gate in preparation for departure. Like most European flights, she arrives in the morning (around 10-11 am), gets towed to a remote stand during the day, and will head back in the evening at around 7 pm. 

And here's a photo of our plane. Very annoyingly, no ADS-B data is available, meaning I have no idea what her registration is. This isn't like Auric Air either, where you can guess the reg from their tiny fleet. So… yeah. At least we know she's a Dash 8-400, so no guessing on that part. 

The seats onboard. 

Tray table and seatback pocket. 

First views out of the window. 

Pushback started 50 minutes late, You can see the reason for our delay - that's quite an intimidating storm heading our way. 

One last view of the apron with an Airlink in the all-black livery (ZS-YDE). Apparently, it's to promote their frequent flyer program: Skybucks, where the black tier is the highest of the program. It reminds me of Air New Zealand's All Blacks livery. 

Bye bye, Johannesburg (for the last time). One last view of South Africa before we climb into the clouds. 

We spent a considerable amount of time flying around and below the clouds. 

But around 30 minutes later, we passed the storm and the seatbelt signs came off.

Let's have a look at the contents of the seatback pocket, which includes the usual air sickness bag…

… safety card…

… and an inflight magazine. 

Shortly after, the crew also came around with a snack box.

Yeah… it's a lot. It includes 2 serial bars, a carton of juice, a croissant, and a bun. This is an amazing amount of food for a 1-hour flight - it's probably more than what I got for my 10-hour long haul on the same airline haha. 

Not a lot to see as we descend into Maputo sadly. 

But welcome to a very wet and gloomy Mozambique! The rain drenched the whole place. 

Thanks to the storm, we arrived 1 hour and 20 minutes late. This leaves just over 90 minutes until my connecting flight to Lisbon… at least that was the plan. If you've read the story about my last connection here in Maputo, you'll know that nothing is simple here. But I'll save that nightmare for the next FR.

I'll end this FR here, the next one in this series will continue exactly where we left off. I absolutely can't wait to share that trainwreck with you guys. Until then, thanks for reading, and take care!