TACV Cabo Verde Airlines is expected to resume connections to Europe within the next several hours with a flight to Paris, following the suspension of at least two flights due to the cloud of ash expelled from the erupting Iceland volcano. The information was provided to A Semana Online by the airline’s press aide, Carlos Carvalho.

According to Carvalho, TACV is in constant contact with European aviation authorities, and all indications are that the flight to Paris, which was supposed to have left on Monday, will depart in the next several hours. “We had to cancel the flight to Bergamo (Italy) that was supposed to take place on Sunday and which should have taken 134 passengers and returned with 200. The other flight, which had Paris as its destination, was to have left Praia airport with 101 people on board and return with 153 passengers. We expect to carry out this flight in the next few hours,” he explains.

This is good news for Cape Verde’s flagship airline, which, according to Carvalho, was beginning to become apprehensive about the possibility of having to cancel its flight to Amserdam, scheduled for tomorrow, as well. “We haven’t yet calculated the losses, which will be considerable, because we had no entrance of revenues, although the operational maintenance costs remained the same. Fortunately, all of our aircrafts were in Cape Verde, but we had several crew members stuck abroad.”

Since the ash cloud covered most of Europe’s skies approximately one week ago, at least 17 TACV, TAP and charter flights to and from Cape Verde were cancelled, according to information from Airport and Air Security company ASA.