The national carrier of the Cape Verde Islands, TACV, has appointed Airline Centre UK, part of the AVIAREPS Group AG, as its general sales agent for the U.K.

The airline operates a network of inter-islands scheduled services and also has routes to Boston in the United States and Fortaleza in Brazil, both of which have large Caperdean communities.

In Europe the airline has scheduled services from the main island of Santiago and Isla do Sal to Lisbon,  Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and Madrid as well as to Amsterdam, Paris and Milan. It also serves Dakar and Bissau in West Africa

Services to and from Praia, the main island in the group, operate on Thursdays from Heathrow on Bmi via an Amsterdam connection, and to Sal on Mondays from Heathrow on Air France or Bmi via Paris connection from Charles de Gaulle.

Manchester-Sal services also operate on Mondays on Air France via a CDG connection.

The airline was formed in 1955 and today has a fleet of Boeing 757-200ER (extended range) aircraft, Boeing 737 and smaller aircraft used for inter-islands services. In 2004 the airline carried 345,000 passengers on inter-islands services and 215,000 on international routes.

General manager for the airline in the U.K., Mitchell Hawes commented: TACV is currently a small airline by most international standards, but in the past two to three the islands have been ‘discovered’ by many thousands of tourists as well as residents from more northerly climes who are looking to buy property in the sun.

‘With all-year round sun, attractive temperatures and a search now on by tour operators for ‘new’, safe destinations, the Cape Verde Islands are being promoted as ‘the new Caribbean’ and are well placed to very quickly become an established destination on the tourist map.’

Plans are for the Airline Centre UK to market TACV using connections from the U.K. to Paris and Amsterdam using services of Bmi from Heathrow.
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