Fresh from winning the inaugural outstanding contribution award at World Routes 2017, Brussels Airport’s head of aviation development Léon Verhallen opens up about his greatest achievements, the future of airline marketing and how the airport is recovering from a terrorist attack less than two years ago.
Irish regional carrier CityJet has secured a two-year wet-lease deal with Brussels Airlines to operate three Sukhoi SSJ100 Superjets for the Belgian flag carrier on routes from Brussels Airport from April 2017. The deal follows a formal tender from Brussels Airlines to support its network needs as it completes the retirement of its Avro RJ100 fleet from commercial operation.
Around a month after operations recommenced at Brussels Airport after the terrorist attacks of March 22, 2016, the number of passengers per flight has been rising faster than expected, so a new flight schedule has been drawn up to enable all passengers to leave in complete safety and comfort.
The twin explosions at the airport on March 22, 2016 were shortly followed by another at a metro station in the centre of the Belgian capital and left about 34 dead and 250 wounded. So-called Islamic State (IS) has said it was behind the attacks and warned that more would follow. But, how can and will the industry react?
Star Alliance partners Brussels Airlines and United Airlines have moved quickly to partly fill the void left following Jet Airways’ decision to close its scissor hub at Brussels Airport from spring next year. The main gateway to the Belgian capital city is a key European gateway for the airline grouping and accounts for around 52 per cent of the departure capacity.
The new Brussels – Thessaloniki route will support the strong Greek diaspora in Belgium and southern Netherlands. Many Greeks who live in Belgium have their roots in Northern Greece and return to their birthplace each summer.
The revised Amsterdam operation and agreement with KLM will enable Jet Airways to increase its coverage of the European market, albeit on a codeshare basis. Alongside its existing Brussels services the carrier currently only serves two other European points: London Heathrow (daily from Delhi and twice daily from Mumbai) and Paris Charles De Gaulle (daily from Mumbai).
The new flying for Brussels Airlines is being made possible by the positioning of one of its Embraer ERJ-145s into the Belgian capital. This aircraft will enable it to offer an improved flight schedule on its existing East Midlands – Brussels route and enable UK business travellers to spend a full day in Brussels and return in the evening, without having to overnight in the city.
Jet Airways currently offers a mini hub operation at Brussels Airport with daily flights from Delhi and Mumbai in India connecting in the Belgian capital to daily continuation flights to Newark, USA and Toronto, Canada, but changes to its business strategy after United Arab Emirates (UAE) national carrier, Etihad Airways became an equity partner mean this demand is not being more efficiently handled via Abu Dhabi International Airport.
At the launch of its summer 2016 schedule, Brussels Airlines confirms new routes will be introduced from Brussels to Belfast City, Crete, Jerez, while new winter routes to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria and Tenerife will be continued into the summer.
Although this will be the only non-stop flight between Japan and Belgium, more than 85,000 passengers a year are flying between the two countries, a figure that has been on the rise in each of the last four years. When you consider the ground leakage from Belgium to neighbouring countries already connected directly to Japan, the market becomes more sizeable.
The five-times-weekly operation will commence from September 14, 2015, and will be good news for many EU officials and businessmen who commute between Bremen and the European capital via other European airports.
An additional ten airports worldwide have been added to the approved list of airports to offer preclearance facilities to passengers travelling to the US.
Vueling’s latest uploaded schedules show the Airbus A321 entering scheduled service on July 3, 2015 operating a morning return rotation on the Barcelona – Nantes route. The same day the aircraft will operate from Barcelona to Brussels and back and then in the evening to Granada and back before operating an overnight flight to Moscow.
Niki said at the time the flights were announced that it believed there would be sufficient demand for the short flights, which despite a 25 minute block time were estimated to be just ten minutes in length. The majority of this demand would have been to feed its wider network from Vienna International Airport, according to the carrier.
Although Belgium represents the 6th source market for Tenerife with 2.7 per cent of the total tourists travelling each year to the island, they also represent the 4th source market and account for 4.7 per cent of tourists staying in 5-Star hotels, according to visitor information.
The annual Routes Marketing Awards are highly regarded as the most prestigious awards in the industry as they are voted for and judged by the airline network planning community. They provide the airline community with the chance to have their say as to which airport or tourism authority has provided the best overall marketing services to them in relation to route development and marketing over the past year.
With five based aircraft, Berlin will become the airlines’ 73rd base, and will see the launch of sixteen new routes, bringing the total number of destinations to 22.
Turkish airline, SunExpress has recently announced its plans for a total of 21 new routes for the summer 2015 season, with departures mainly from Antalya, Dalaman, Izmir and Konya.
The new ‘Pharma Express’ route will see an Airbus A330-200F operate between Brussels and Basel and then on to Doha on a twice weekly basis from January 28, 2015 with flights every Wednesday and Saturday.
The Austrian low-cost carrier is to launch flights from Bratislava to Brussels and Palma in summer 2015 and to facilitate its new services will operate one of the shortest international flights in the world between its base in Vienna and the Slovakian capital.
