According to official figures compiled by Lusa, the total movement of passengers at Cape Verdean airports and aerodromes rose more than 33 percent in March to nearly 220,000.
According to statistics from the Civil Aviation Agency (AAC), which regulates the sector in Cape Verde, the archipelago’s four international airports and three airfields recorded a total movement of 219,351 passengers in March, up from 164,339 (+33.5%) in the same month of 2022.
This is also an increase of 5.8% compared to February, the month immediately before.
According to the same data, most passengers last month were registered on international flights (177,946), and the rest on domestic connections.
Also in March, the airports and aerodromes of the archipelago recorded a movement of 2,299 aircraft on domestic and international flights, an increase of 19.9% compared to the same month in 2022.
The passenger movement in airports and airfields in Cape Verde has been growing strongly in the last year, following the recovery of tourism demand and in August reached 225,998 passengers, a record since the beginning of Ccovid-19, surpassed last January (229,791), approaching the record before the pandemic.
In February 2020, before the effects of the pandemic on national and international connections, Cape Verde’s airports handled 232,131 passengers.
The Cape Verdean government signed on July 18 a contract for the concession of the airport public service to the Vinci group, involving the 40-year management of the four international airports and three aerodromes, receiving 80 million euros in rent, expecting to start this year.
The new company that will manage Cape Verde’s airports is 70% owned by Vinci Airports and 30% by Portugal’s ANA (owned by Vinci since 2013).
Cape Verde’s airports handled more than 2.1 million passengers in 2022, almost triple the previous year, according to AAC data previously reported by Lusa.
The four international airports and the three airfields of the archipelago recorded a total movement of 2,177,611 passengers on domestic and foreign flights in 2022, an increase of 162% compared to 830,240 in 2021.
According to AAC data, the Cape Verdean airports and airfields added 25,400 aircraft movements, compared to 14,284 in 2021.
Despite the strong growth in 2022, airport movements in Cape Verde remained far below the values before the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2019, the year in which the archipelago broke the record for tourists, with more than 819,000, this movement was 2,771,931 passengers and 35,202 aircraft.
With information from Lusa