Despite the fact that the Cape Verde government has announced that it has granted the concession for the operation of the public inter-island scheduled air transport service to the company BestFly Angola, for a period of six months, as of yesterday, TICV says it does not leave Cape Verde and moves forward with summer flight plans
During the last week, several conversations took place between the shareholders of the Spanish company Binter, which owns the Cape Verdean company, and government representatives. The Director-General of Transportes Inter-Ilhas de Cabo Verde (TICV), Luís Quinta, assured Lusa that it was never transmitted that the company would cease operations.
TICV handed over to the Civil Aviation Agency (AAC) the schedule for the summer season of 2021, that should start to take effect yesterday, awaiting authorization from the Cape Verdean regulator.
This flight schedule of TICV foresees the realization of 32 weekly connections between the various islands of the archipelago and depends only on this endorsement by the regulatory agency, the company being, até agora, the only one operating in the archipelago.
Luís Quinta declined to comment on the content of the Cape Verdean Government's communiqué, that on Friday justified the choice of the Angolan company BestFly to take over the emergency concession, for six months, of public inter-island air transport service in Cape Verde, with the alleged cessation of TICV's activity.
Em 2020, domestic flights in Cape Verde, operated only by TICV, moved around 125 mil passageiros, menos 286 mil (-230%) face ao ano anterior, due to the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In an apparent dispute with the government, on the need for public support for the private company, the TICV that reached in 2019 the mark of one million passengers transported in Cape Verde, then had tickets for sale only until 16 de Maio.
Not end of April, when it was already known the unavailability of tickets for sale for May, the Prime Minister, Ulysses Correia e Silva, acknowledged the difficult situation the company is going through, but ensured that the Government will not under any circumstances let Cape Verde have problems with internal flights, to add that domestic flights are fundamental for the unification of the national market and for the movement and mobility of people.
In the statement released on Friday, the government assumed that the Covid-19 pandemic had a devastating effect on the civil aviation sector and that the ICRC was no exception, with a reduction in passengers carried, negatively impacting your sales and results, situation that continues to prevail this year.
– The company's shareholders informed the Government about this situation, still in 2020, and the government promptly presented some aid modalities within the framework of the instruments defined to support the civil aviation industry, in order to overcome this situation. In the course of conversations about the support model that could be negotiated, the shareholders expressed, igualmente, the lack of interest in the business in Cape Verde and the consequent desire to stop the company's operations and liquidation, unless there was no interested buyer, referred-not communicated.
Entretanto, BestFly started this Monday the concession period for six months, foreseeing to carry out 30 domestic flights in the first week of operation.
Em comunicado, the Cape Verdean government justifies that this concession follows the manifest decision of the ICRC to cease its operations, a partir de 17 de Maio.
