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. 

 

TACV Network, c.2011

An original design by Airlineroutemaps.com shows the network of Cape Verdean flag carrier, TACV. Few airlines could boast such an impressive size-to-reach ratio, with the tiny company connecting four continents on both sides of the Atlantic. From Praia, the national capital, flights hop to nearby Dakar and Bissau on the mainland; the largest regional hub and the nearby Lusophone capital.

The motherland is well served also, with three flights to the Iberian peninsula in total: to the two busiest Portuguese airports, Lisbon and Porto, as well as Madrid. Paris, Amsterdam, and Milan are all served from Sal, with Munich connected via a stop in Las Palmas.

In the New World, the giant Portuguese-speaking Brazil is linked from the closest large city, Fortaleza, while larger, closer airports in North America are bypassed in favor of Boston, hub of America's largest Portuguese-speaking immigrant communities; New England boasts the largest Cape Verdean population outside of the islands themselves. TACV uses a B757 on the route.

TACV Cabo Verde Airlines Timetable, November 2011

It doesn't get much simpler than an Excel Spreadsheet to publish a timetable. The above Flugplan is currently still available on TACV (Transportes Aéreos de Cabo Verde)'s German-language website, which is targeted toward Teutonic tourists out of Frankfurt.

Despite its diminutive size, TACV is a quad-continental carrier, with additional European flights to Lisbon, Paris and Amsterdam, and the Wikipedia list of destinations, updated at the same time as this schedule, also lists Nice, secondary cities in Portugal, and several cities in Spain and Italy. A single transatlantic 757 service from Praia to Boston Logan is shown above, bridges the island to the world's largest Cape Verdean community, centered around southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Closer to the islands themselves, TACV provides one of the few scheduled services to Lusophone Guinea-Bissau, linking the tiny capital Bissau with Dakar, and also serving Freetown and Banjul on the mainland--although interestingly the African schedule is not included in the above matrix. Lastly, a single link to South America's massive Portuguese-speaking population is achieved by landing at the closest Brazilian city, Fortaleza.

Turkish Airlines: Istanbul-Dakar-Sao Paulo, July 2009

This is a new format for Timetablist: a cellphone camera shot of the departures board of Yoff International Airport in Dakar, Senegal (taken at the ungodly hour of 2:52am! Why are West African flights all in the middle of the night? Really, would someone please leave a comment explaining this...)

This particular screen shows several recent developments, among them Dakar's importance in its flights to the US, Delta's presence in Africa, but Timetablist's favorite route in the world right now has to be Turkish Airlines's A340 service from Istanbul to São Paulo-Guarulhos via Dakar. How a Turkish carrier is connecting Brazil and Africa is a story of our global age, and the news of its launch was bewildering and exciting when annouced last year, and it is sad but unsurprising to hear that it is ending in next month. The Dakar-South America connection has historically not been an uncommon one, but is fun and unique nowadays. (NB: Timetablist was waiting to board the 03:40 for Accra, in which it was decided to serve a full dinner at 4:30 in the morning.)