Cabo Verde Airlines

When a Boeing 737 with the registration prefix D4- glides in over Lisbon, it is worth a second look: it very likely comes from the Cape Verde Islands. Cabo Verde Airlines is one of the smallest flag carriers you can see regularly in Europe – and one with an especially eventful history. This page shows you where the airline comes from, what it flies today and where you are most likely to catch it.

Cabo Verde Airlines at a glance

Cabo Verde Airlines is the national airline of the Republic of Cape Verde, an island nation in the Atlantic about 600 kilometers off the coast of West Africa. Its roots go back to 1958: that year an aero club gave rise to Transportes Aéreos de Cabo Verde, TACV for short. The company has carried its current brand name since 2018.

Cape Verde is closely tied to Portugal – the islands were a Portuguese colony until 1975, and after independence many Cape Verdeans emigrated to Portugal. That is exactly how the airline’s most important route came about: Sal–Lisbon, opened in 1985 as the first international connection. To this day Lisbon is the place where you are most likely to see Cabo Verde Airlines in Europe. You can find more about the airport itself on the page about Lisbon Airport.

Today the airline is once again fully owned by the State of Cape Verde. The hub is Amílcar Cabral Airport on the island of Sal (SID), and the airport of the capital Praia (RAI) on the island of Santiago also plays an important role.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code VR: appears in the flight number on departure boards, tickets and in the airport’s flight schedule.
• ICAO code TCV: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers. It is a leftover from the old name TACV.
• Callsign CABOVERDE: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

For collectors this is a handy tip: even though the fuselage has long said “Cabo Verde Airlines,” you will often still find the name TACV in databases and schedules. Both mean the same airline. If you are unsure how trackers display flight numbers and ICAO callsigns, the guide to flight tracking for spotters will help.

The history: from island airline to Atlantic hub and back

Hardly any small airline has seen as many twists over the past ten years as Cabo Verde Airlines. For spotters, this history explains why old photos show completely different aircraft and liveries.

The beginnings as an island airline

In its first decades, TACV mainly connected the islands with each other. Until the mid-1980s it served eight of the nine inhabited islands – with small types such as the de Havilland Dove, Britten-Norman Islander, later the Hawker Siddeley HS 748 and the de Havilland Canada Twin Otter. From the 1990s, turboprops from ATR took over the island service, first the ATR 42, later the ATR 72 as well.

In 1985 came the leap across the Atlantic: besides Lisbon, TACV flew to Boston, home to a large Cape Verdean community – at first with a DC-10 provided by Mozambique’s LAM. In 2015 Providence, in the US state of Rhode Island, replaced the Boston route.

The 757 era

In 1996 TACV took delivery of its first Boeing 757-200, registered D4-CBG and named “B.Leza” after a well-known Cape Verdean composer. The 757 shaped the airline’s image for more than two decades: it was big enough for the routes to Europe and the Americas. In total, six 757-200s flew for TACV and Cabo Verde Airlines, the last of which left in 2022.

Icelandair takes the lead

2017 began an exciting chapter. The government handed management of the airline to Loftleidir Icelandic, a company of the Icelandair Group. The idea came straight from the North Atlantic: just as Icelandair uses Keflavík as a connecting point between Europe and North America, Sal was to become a hub between Europe, West Africa, North and South America. The name Loftleidir carries tradition here – the historic Icelandic airline Loftleiðir was itself once known for cheap Atlantic flights.

As part of the realignment, TACV handed its domestic flights to Binter Cabo Verde in August 2017, moved the hub from Praia to Sal and in November 2017 received additional 757-200s from the Icelandair fleet. In 2018 the new name Cabo Verde Airlines followed, along with new routes to Salvador da Bahia, Milan, Paris and Rome as well as more flights to Recife and Fortaleza in Brazil. In March 2019 an investor group around Loftleidir acquired 51 percent of the shares for 1.3 million euros.

Shutdown and return to state hands

The Covid pandemic ended the experiment. From March 2020 the airline gradually suspended all flight operations. In July 2021 the State of Cape Verde took the company back, followed by a new board and a phase of restructuring with significantly reduced operations. In 2022 the last 757s left the fleet.

Restart with the 737

In July 2023 a Boeing 737 MAX 8 joined the fleet, with which the airline rebuilt its European network step by step: France from late July 2023, Italy from November 2023, later Barcelona, Porto, seasonally Bilbao and in 2026 the return to Providence and Recife. Since the 2025/26 winter schedule, Cabo Verde Airlines has also been flying more between the islands again, according to schedule filings.

The fleet: small but exciting

Today the fleet of Cabo Verde Airlines is so small that you can count it on one hand. According to fleet overviews (as of 2025/2026):

Type	In service	Seats	Spotter tip
Boeing 737-700	1	120 (12 business, 108 economy)	Short Next Generation 737, registration D4-CCI
Boeing 737 MAX 8	1	179 economy	In service since July 2023, registration D4-CCJ
ATR 72-600	2 on order	70	Turboprop for island service

You recognize the Boeing 737-700 by its stubby fuselage: it is clearly shorter than the 737-800 or the MAX 8. The 737 MAX 8, in turn, gives itself away with its large engines with serrated trailing edges on the cowlings and the split-tip winglets. How to reliably tell the 737 generations apart is shown in the article Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart. The manufacturer of both types is Boeing.

Because two aircraft leave hardly any reserve, the airline leases additional equipment from other companies depending on the season. Then an aircraft in another airline’s livery and with another registration may operate under a VR flight number. What is behind such lease agreements is explained in the article on wet leasing.

A look at the historic fleet

If you collect airlines not only currently but historically, TACV offers an astonishing variety of types for such a small company:

• De Havilland Dragon Rapide, Dove and Auster – the pioneer era of the late 1950s and 1960s
• Britten-Norman Islander, HS 748 and Twin Otter – the island aircraft from the 1970s to the early 2000s
• Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia and CASA C-212 – short guest appearances in the late 1980s and early 1990s
• ATR 42 and ATR 72 – island service from 1994 to 2017
• Boeing 757-200 – long haul from 1996 to 2022
• Boeing 737-300, 737-400 and 737-800 – individual aircraft between 2002 and 2016

A TACV Dornier 228 crashed on the island of Santo Antão in August 1999; all 18 people on board were killed. The accident is considered the worst in the airline’s history.

How to recognize Cabo Verde Airlines

Because the fleet is so small and leased aircraft occasionally step in, the paint scheme alone is not a reliable feature. Rely on these three points:

The route network

The network of Cabo Verde Airlines is oriented toward the Cape Verdean diaspora and tourism. The large communities in Portugal, France, Italy, the USA and Brazil explain why these particular destinations are on the schedule.

Region	Destinations (selection, as of 2026)	Background
Portugal	Lisbon, Porto	Historic core route, large Cape Verdean community
Western Europe	Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Milan-Bergamo, seasonally Bilbao	Diaspora and holiday traffic
North America	Providence (USA)	Successor to the 1985 Boston route
South America	Recife (Brazil), from Praia and from winter 2026 also from Sal	Portuguese-speaking link across the South Atlantic
Domestic	Praia, Sal, Boa Vista, São Vicente, São Nicolau, Maio	Island network, expanded again since 2025

The offering fluctuates strongly: routes are added seasonally, suspended and resumed. For fall and winter 2026, for example, the airline has announced the return of the Sal–Recife connection. Plan every spotting trip with the airport’s current flight schedule.

Spotting Cabo Verde Airlines

In Lisbon

Lisbon is the classic. This is where Cabo Verde Airlines lands most often, and here you meet it among the TAP aircraft, the flights of Azores Airlines – the long-haul and mainland subsidiary of the SATA Group, whose sister SATA Air Açores flies only between the Azores islands – and many other Atlantic and African airlines. Incidentally, Cabo Verde Airlines has a codeshare agreement with Azores Airlines, as well as with TAAG Angola Airlines. Where to stand at Humberto Delgado Airport and how the runway direction in use determines the spot is explained in the guide Plane spotting in Lisbon.

In Porto, Paris and Italy

The airline also turns up in Porto, at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport and in Milan-Bergamo – but only with a few flights per week. In Paris a single 737 easily gets lost among widebody jets. Here it pays to know the arrival time beforehand and to wait specifically for that one landing.

On the islands

If you vacation on Sal or Boa Vista, you have the best chances of seeing both of the airline’s aircraft. Amílcar Cabral Airport on Sal has a 3,272-meter main runway 01/19 – the longest in the country. Its history is worth a story of its own: built by Italy in 1939 as a refueling stop for South America flights, later used for decades as a stopover by South African Airways. Since 2023 Vinci Airports has operated the country’s airports under a 40-year concession. Besides Cabo Verde Airlines you see leisure airlines from all over Europe there, and regional flights to the Canary Islands, for example from Binter Canarias.

Common mix-ups

• Treating TACV and Cabo Verde Airlines as two airlines – it is the same company, only the name changed in 2018.
• Attributing every flight to Cape Verde to the airline – TAP, easyJet, TUI and many leisure airlines also fly to Sal and Boa Vista.
• Logging the Icelandair period as a takeover by Icelandair – from 2019 the majority owner was an investor group around Loftleidir, and since 2021 it is the state again.
• Logging leased aircraft as the airline’s own fleet – another airline’s livery or registration under a VR flight number means: different operator, not Cabo Verde Airlines.
• Confusing the 737-700 with the 737-800 – the -700 is clearly shorter and has fewer windows ahead of and behind the wing.
• Equating Binter Cabo Verde with Binter Canarias – Binter Cabo Verde took over the island flights in 2017 but is a separate company.

Conclusion

Cabo Verde Airlines is small, but anything but boring. Behind the two 737s stands an airline that began as an island link, built bridges to the diaspora in Europe and the Americas with the 757, wanted to become an Atlantic hub under Icelandic leadership and restarted after the Covid shutdown. For spotters it is a rewarding collectible: rare enough to be thrilling, and regular enough in Lisbon to catch deliberately. If you like collecting exotic airlines, the article Collecting airlines has more ideas.