From Asemana

More than 500 passengers have been left on standby in Cape Verde and in the United States due to technical problems in TACV Cabo Verde Airlines’ Boeing aircrafts. The aircraft rented by AeroAtlantico to carry out the connection between Praia and Paris, France has not yet received authorization from the two countries’ authorities to operate in their respective airspace, while TACV continues to search for an aircraft with an ETOPS certification to rent in order to operate its Praia-Boston route.

A total of 240 passengers are currently stranded on the island of Sal. Laura Mariano of TACV’s marketing department explains that the aircraft that was supposed to transport these passengers to France has been held up at Praia International Airport since yesterday morning due to bureaucratic issues. “The AeroAtlantico Boeing brought passengers from Paris yesterday, but it requires authorization to return to France with the passengers currently held up on Sal.”

In the meantime, the documentation and procedures have been concluded, and TACV is currently awaiting authorization from Cape Verde’s and France’s respective civil aviation agencies to define the flight’s departure time. Until then, the passengers will remain in hotels, while the company is in permanent contact with other airlines operating in Cape Verde to try to secure alternative travel arrangements for them – on Monday, for example, TACV managed to embark 31 passengers to Lisbon and Paris on flights operated by other companies.

More complicated is the situation of the 300 passengers retained in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States – TACV has yet to secure an aircraft to get them to Praia. “We’re looking for aircrafts, but in this case the process is more complex because it’s a transatlantic operation – the United States requires aircraft landing there to have an Extended Twin Engine Operations (ETOPS) certificate. We’re doing all of the necessary procedures, but it’s hard to rent aircrafts with this certification. We know that the United States exercises a certain level of rigor in its authorizations. But we’ll continue to do our work and soon we’ll have some indication of the availability of an aircraft to substitute our Boeing,” says Mariano.

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