The non-binding agreement with Swiss operator Moov targets island-hopping and resort transfers, in a market where Eve has 2,700 commitments and 100 firm orders.
Eve Air Mobility has signed a letter of intent with Moov for up to 30 electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, aimed at tourism and regional mobility across Cabo Verde and Europe.
The proposed use cases are squarely trade-relevant: sightseeing flights, shuttle services linking airports, ports and resorts, and inter-island connections between São Vicente, Santo Antão, Sal, Praia and Boa Vista. Medical transport and infrastructure inspection were also identified.
The timing question matters more than the aircraft count. The agreement is non-binding, no capital is committed, and Eve moved its certification target to 2028 in June, the third slip from an original 2026 goal. The company has completed 59 test flights with one full-scale prototype and applied to EASA for a type certificate on July 20.
Cabo Verde recorded around 1.18mn arrivals in 2024, up 16.5% year on year, on World Bank figures cited by Eve. The archipelago is upgrading airport infrastructure and has become one of West Africa’s fastest-growing leisure markets, heavily weighted towards European package traffic into Sal and Boa Vista.
“Cabo Verde offers a compelling combination of tourism demand growth, geographic diversity and infrastructure investment momentum,” said Eve chief executive Johann Bordais.
Moov, incorporated in Switzerland and based in Lugano, is developing what it calls the Atlantic Gateway, an intercontinental network linking Europe, Africa and Latin America. Its team includes former executives from Azul, Swiss, Etihad, FedEx and ASL Aviation Group.
Eve signed a separate 16-aircraft letter with aviation finance firm Shearwater Global Capital on July 19, ahead of Farnborough.
Why it matters for the trade
Read the aviation press this week and eVTOL announcements look like a market. Read the order books and they look like a queue for a product nobody has certified. Eve holds roughly 2,700 commitments and 100 firm orders, and its own timeline has moved twice. Nothing here changes what an operator can sell in 2027.
That said, the use case identified is one of the more credible in the sector. Cabo Verde’s problem is real and specific: the islands are separated by short sea crossings that currently require either ferries or turboprop hops through congested regional schedules, and the resort clusters on Sal and Boa Vista sit some distance from the cultural draws on Santo Antão and São Vicente. A 20-minute island transfer priced as a premium excursion is a product operators could actually sell, unlike the urban air taxi concepts that dominated the sector’s first wave and never resolved their infrastructure problem.
For tour operators and DMCs working Cabo Verde, the practical horizon is 2029 at the earliest, and only if certification holds. What is worth doing now is watching whether Cabo Verde’s civil aviation authority engages on vertiport regulation, because that, rather than the aircraft, will determine whether any of this is deliverable. Infrastructure decisions taken in the next 18 months will decide the timeline more than Eve’s flight test programme does.