With the recent opening of the new Praia International Airport, Cape Verde's capital is in a honeymoon, with its hotels full, its businesses doing well and its residents now able to enjoy direct links to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, the veteran Ama­lcar Cabral International Airport on the island of Sal has seen a certain degree of change, beginning, obviously, with the reduction in the number of passengers on internal flights.

With the opening of an international airport in Praia, Ama­lcar Cabral International Airport is no longer a mandatory point of entry into Cape Verde. This new reality represents the fulfillment of along-standing desire among residents of Cape Verde's Leeward Islands, a region that accounts for 75% of all air passengers in the country.

Even without asking employees of TACV Cabo Verde Airlines and the other services operating at the airport, it is easy to see that, as one TACV agent put it, things are a little calmer now. The traffic jams of passengers arriving from international flights and making connections to Praia, Fogo and Maio are practically a thing of the past, and the number of flights between Sal and Praia, which averaged four or five a day before Praia International Airport opened, has now been reduced to two, at most three. There are days when in the morning we don't even have a single flight to Praia. Today, for example, the first flight leaves at 6:45 pm, observed one employee.

Like TACV, Air Luxor has also chosen Cape Verde's capital as its final destination, with two regular flights arriving from Lisbon every week and one weekly charter flight to Sal.

Number of domestic passengers down, number of foreign passengers up

These alterations in flight routes are already being reflected in official figures from Airport and Air Security company ASA. A comparison between November 2004 and November 2005 shows a reduction in the number of passengers on domestic and international flights, both regular and charter. In November 2004, a total of 51,240 passengers traveled through Amílcar Cabral International Airport on Sal, as opposed to 49,460 in November of this year. The number of foreign passengers, however, coming to and leaving from Sal has actually risen, from 30,468 in November 2004 to 30,559 in November 2005.

The obvious explanation for this is the increased presence of a number of international airlines, such as the prestigious German carrier Condor and its fellow German company Air Hamburg, which recently began regular flights to Sal. There are also charters from Italy's Livingstone and France's Air Mediterrain. Data indicates a total of 539 international charter passengers in November 2004, as opposed to 984 in November of this year. Figures so far from December also show an increase.

What has changed

Despite the apparent calm, TACV employees, security officials and travel agents affirm that in terms of total traffic, things have not changed all that much, at least until now. TACV agents, for example, are much more relaxed, and comment the significant drop in pressure, the result of a simple fact: the passengers coming in on international flights nowadays, particularly charter flights, have Sal itself as their final destination. So they arrive and go straight to their hotels, and we don't have any problems. When they depart, they arrive at the airport with their seats confirmed, they're put on the plane, and they leave, says one TACV employee. Although this does not represent a reduction in the total workload, since TACV is also responsible for the handling of the charter flights, the work that is done is now much more methodical and organized.

There are, however, those who are concerned about the future of Amílcar Cabral International Airport, including the owners of the restaurants and stores located in the airport concourse and the taxi drivers who work the airport. All of these have noted a drop in business, which to a certain degree has always been a factor of the mandatory layovers of ongoing passengers.

Nevertheless, many travel agents say that the opening of Praia International Airport has not brought any great changes. Cape Verdeans aren't very used to working with travel agencies and prefer to buy their tickets directly with airlines, and since most of the traffic that has now been re-routed to Praia is made up of Cape Verdeans and business travelers, we're still doing fine, says Clara Estrela, an employee and associate at Cabetur.

Apart from several points, then, Sal has few reasons to worry about a less prosperous future, at least as long as Praia doesn't become a tourist destination able to rival Sal. This opinion is evident in the words of ASA director Mario Paixa and TACV commercial director Raul Andrade.

According to Paixo, AmÃalcar Cabral Airport will continue to be one of the main entry points into the country for quite some time, even after the future international airports on Boa Vista and Sao Vicente are complete.

Raul Andrade believes, in fact, that during the next five to ten years, Sal, although no longer a mandatory stop, will continue to receive most of the passengers arriving in the archipelago, in large part because of its tourist potential. In Andrade's view, improved transportation services will encourage Cape Verdeans themselves to travel in and become more familiar with their own home country, and Sal, being its main tourist attraction, will absorb a good portion of these domestic tourists.

Source: A Semana