Maputo Airport

Maputo International Airport, 3 km northwest of Mozambique's capital, is the country's principal international gateway and one of southern Africa's oldest continuously operating civil airfields, established in 1922 under the Portuguese administration. The primary 3,660 m (12,008 ft) asphalt runway plus a 1,700 m secondary strip give MPM the two-runway configuration rare among airports of its passenger tier — the field handles roughly 1.2M passengers annually and the combination of runway scale, widebody capability, and diplomatic-capital status places it inside the 534 largest. About 9 airlines operate 22 routes to 20 destinations (2026). South African Airways, Airlink, LAM Mozambique Airlines, Ethiopian, Kenya Airways, TAP Air Portugal, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines, and flag-adjacent regional operators serve Johannesburg, Cape Town, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Lisbon, Doha, Istanbul, Luanda, and a substantial domestic network to Beira, Nampula, Pemba, Vilankulo, Tete, and Inhambane. The Portuguese long-haul link is historically and commercially central, reflecting the still-close economic and migration ties between Mozambique and Portugal. The Chinese-built Terminal 1, opened in 2010 on the eve of the Mozambique–China cooperation expansion, added a modern international pier, jet bridges, and a diplomatic VIP pavilion, with nameplate capacity of 900,000 passengers (now exceeded). MPM is the operating base for LAM, hosts the Mozambican Air Force's principal detachment, and serves as the designated widebody alternate for Johannesburg OR Tambo's East African departures. A second terminal dedicated to domestic traffic keeps international and internal flows separate — a configuration well suited to the country's long north–south geography.