Léon Verhallen, head of aviation development at Brussels Airport, explains the airport's key hopes at World Routes.
What have been your most notable route successes?
We opened three new China routes between November 2017 and March 2018. Hainan Airlines commenced three weekly flights to Shanghai and two weekly flights to Shenzhen.
Cathay Pacific launched 4 weekly flights to Hong Kong. For the past 12 months we counted 15 new or confirmed new destinations, also including Tbilisi by Georgian Airlines and Amman by Ryanair.
All this even excludes the latest exciting development. Primera Air will base two new B737MAX9 aircraft at Brussels and launch flights to Newark (daily), Boston (4 weekly) and Washington (3 weekly) from May 2019.
What are you next targets for route development?
On the long-haul side our next targets are the ‘usual suspects’ of many other European airports such as San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Delhi, Singapore and several more.
Within Europe we also still see many unserved potential routes, such as Cork, Belfast, Southampton, Stavanger, Leipzig…
However, a key element for our approach at Routes is also all the hard work to assist our clients to optimise the current network, through better seat load factors, aircraft upgauge or more flights.
What is your main message at World Routes?
Our submission for the Routes World 2018 Award repeats the key for our success: ‘have seats, will travel’. New airlines and new routes will discover that the team offers high quality and consistent support to assure that all those new seats on the market also end up with a successful seat load factor.
If you want to learn more, visit us at the Brussels Airport booth at C43, and at the same time taste some real good Belgian beer in the afternoon.
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