[8] Charter flights were operated for a short period of time;[9] a regular airmail service commenced on 22 December 1937 using a Dragonfly, a Hornet and two Rapides.

[11] Flown with Rapides, the Lourenço Marques–Germinston route was one of the company’s mainstays in the early years; it was operated on a twice-weekly basis, and connected with Imperial Airways services to London.

[13] DETA passengers that were flown along the Mozambican coast could also connect with Imperial services at Lourenço Marques.

At that time, Imperial Airways ran a service between Cape Town and Cairo that called at Lourenço Marques.

[11] A Beira–Salisbury route was launched in February 1947, with scheduled services to Durban and Madagascar also starting by the end of that year.

[11] By March 1952 the carrier was operating a 2,000-mile (3,200 km) long route network that included domestic services as well as international ones to Durban, Johannesburg and Salisbury, served with a fleet of six Doves, five Rapides, three Douglas DC-3s, two Lockheed Lodestars, a Lockheed L-14 and a Junkers Ju 52.

[11] Two of these aircraft were still in its fleet in April 1960, along with three DC-3s, four Doves, three Lodestars and four Rapides that operated a domestic network plus international services to Durban, Johannesburg and Salisbury.

[18] DETA started a fleet modernisation in the early 1960s, when three Fokker F27-200s ordered in June 1961, making the airline the 64th customer for the type, had already been handed over to the company by August 1962; the first of them was named "Lourenço Marques" after the capital city of Portuguese East Africa.

In 1965, Nova Freizo[nb 1] was added to the route network; in November that year, a service linking Beira with Lourenço Marques was launched.

In March 1966, DETA and Swazi Air commenced flying the Lourenço Marques–Manzini run on a joint basis.

[28] Following allegations of corruption,[29] the airline was restructured and renamed LAM – Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique early that year.

At this time, the DC-10-30 and three Boeing 737-200s (including a convertible one) worked on a route network radiating from Maputo that served Beira, Berlin-Schonefeld, Dar-es-Salaam, Harare, Johannesburg, Lisbon, Lusaka, Manzini, Maseru, Nampula, Paris, Pemba, Sofia and Quelimane.

[32] The company had returned the 737-300 to the lessor in 1995 because of its inability to afford the leasing costs of the aircraft, and a Boeing 767-200ER would follow the same fate late that year.

Otherwise, the main sources for trends are industry and press reports, as shown below (as at year ending 31 December):

In early December, a Boeing 737 was leased to fill the capacity shortage created by the crashed airframe.