Spanish airline starts domestic flights in Africa

Spanish airline Binter, a regional carrier that has been linking the different islands in the Canarian archipelago for nearly three decades, is now going to apply its island-hopping know-how to another archipelago off the African seaboard...

This week, Binter CV was officially presented as the new domestic airline in Cabo Verde, a volcanic archipelago some 500km off the coast of West Africa.

Despite of (or maybe thanks to) not having much in the way of natural resources, Cabo Verde, a former Portuguese territory that achieved independence in 1975, has managed to consolidate a democratic stable regime and seen in recent times the emergence of an incipient tourism industry.

The project of Binter is to replicate in Cabo Verde the proven operational scheme that has worked s well in the Canary Islands, where it operates a fleet of, mainly, ATR turboprop aircraft. In fact, Binter has already been linking, since 2012, Cabo Verde with its home base in the Canary islands.

Operating with a Cabo Verdian AOC, Binter aims to link the main islands of Santiago, Sal and Sao Vicente, the latter named after the country's most internationally famous personality, singer Cesaria Evora.

Better air links should definitely give a boost to this little known African country, that seems to be one of the continent's hidden gems.