Providence, Rhode Island (PVD) is not a city most travellers associate with international departures, let alone a direct flight to the Atlantic archipelago of Cabo Verde. Yet Cabo Verde Airlines operates exactly that route, and in his video The 200 Year Old Story Behind America's WEIRDEST International Flight, published on 21 June 2026, Noel Philips boards a Boeing 737 Max 8 at T.F. Green Airport to find out why the service exists at all — and whether the airline is worth flying.
A Route Rooted in 18th-Century Whaling
Before Philips boards, he spends a significant portion of the video explaining the historical context that makes this flight possible. Rhode Island was a major whaling hub in the 1700s, and Cape Verdean sailors were recruited in large numbers by New England whaling ships. That migration created a diaspora community in southern New England that persists today — and, eventually, a commercial rationale for a direct air link.
At around the 9-minute mark, Philips summarises the origin story plainly about the reasons why, more than 200 years later, a Boeing 737 still leaves Providence every week bound for Praia:
“Believe it or not, thanks to whalers in the 1700s.”
The point is not merely trivia. Philips frames the entire flight as a living piece of migration history, arguing that the Providence–Sal Island (SID) route is less a commercial aviation decision than a cultural one, sustained by a community that has maintained ties across the Atlantic for three centuries.
A Four-Hour Delay Before Departure
The pre-flight experience at Providence Airport is not smooth. The flight departs four hours late, a fact Philips notes at around the 6-minute mark without dwelling on it at length. By the time the aircraft finally pushes back, the delay has already coloured his mood. At roughly 7 minutes 49 seconds, he acknowledges a sense of relief simply at being airborne: the wait, rather than any particular discomfort on board, is the dominant negative of the pre-flight sequence.
This marks the first time Philips has covered Cabo Verde Airlines on his channel, and no other major aviation creator has reviewed the airline within the past two years, making this a rare documented account of the product. Josh Cahill flew to Cabo Verde via Asky Airlines approximately two years before this video, but that covered a different carrier and a different routing entirely.
Onboard the Boeing 737 Max 8: Legroom and Catering
The aircraft is a Boeing 737 Max 8, the same type Philips has reviewed on other carriers including Aeromexico and Batik Air. For a six-hour evening flight across the Atlantic, he assesses the seat pitch at around the 5-minute 52-second mark as adequate. The legroom, he says, is relatively comfortable for the duration — a measured positive rather than an enthusiastic endorsement, but meaningful given the length of the sector.
The catering tells a different story. A meal is served — chicken and rice — but Philips describes it at around the 10-minute 59-second mark as quite spicy and a little dry. He does not refuse it or leave it untouched, but the description is plainly underwhelming. There is no mention of a drinks service beyond what accompanies the meal, and no inflight entertainment system is highlighted as a positive feature.
The overall picture of the cabin is functional rather than comfortable in any premium sense: economy class on a narrowbody crossing the Atlantic, with seat pitch that does not cause complaint but catering that falls short of what the journey demands.
The Bigger Argument: History as a Travel Reason
What distinguishes this video from a straightforward airline review is Philips's insistence that the flight's significance cannot be separated from its origins. Near the end of the video, he draws together the historical thread he has been building:
“What might look like one of America's strangest international flights is actually the latest chapter in a connection that began long before air travel ever existed.”
This framing is consistent with a strand of Philips's recent output that emphasises routes with unusual backstories — including his coverage of America's most remote mail flight and a tiny French transatlantic airline operating out of Halifax. In each case, the route itself is the story as much as the airline operating it.
The verdict on Cabo Verde Airlines is mixed but not damning. The four-hour delay is the sharpest criticism, and the dry chicken and rice is a genuine disappointment on a transatlantic sector. The legroom on the 737 Max 8 is the one clear positive. Whether that combination is acceptable depends largely on what a passenger expects from a niche carrier operating a culturally significant but commercially marginal route — and on how much the history matters to them.
