TACV: Fly Non-Stop from Providence to Cabo Verde, 2015

It is a little-known fact that the tiny State of Rhode Island, and much of the surrounding Southern New England region, particularly southeastern Massachusetts, is home to a large diaspora of Cape Verdeans. In fact, the concentration of emigrants is so significant that Cabo Verdean politicians visit the area to campaign in major elections; their presence, along with sizable communities of Brazilians, Azoreans, and those of Portuguese descent, is one of the only regions of the United States in which Portuguese is the most predominant language after English and Spanish.

The Cape Verde connection has been physically manifest during many recent periods by the arrival of one of more unusual airlines to cross the Atlantic: TACV (Transportes Aereos  de Cabo Verde), which announced with great fanfare in February 2015 that it would begin serving T.F. Green State Airport just south of Providence in the summer of that year, with twice and thrice-weekly B757 service its home Lusaphone archipelago off the coast of Africa—the only destination in North America served by the airline. 

The airline had previously served the region's predominant international airport, Boston Logan, but experimented with the switch to the smaller Rhode Island airport, connecting it with the country's capital, Praia. The airport authority advertised the steal with this brochure. 

The link was evidently not successful, as TACV moved back to Boston in the following years, up until it ceased flying altogether during COVID, downstream of a disastrous partnership with Loftlei∂ir, parent company of Icelandair, who took a major stake in 2019, just before world aviation all but shut down, but unwound the investment acerbically in 2021.

Since that crisis, TACV has been all but absent from the skies. It only relaunched limited domestic operations in 2022, and resumed service to Lisbon in 2023 with a sleek new B737 Max. However, it has yet to announce any return to the New England area.