I've covered Air Belgium extensively, partly because I'm interested in start-up airlines, and partly because I was supposed to fly them shortly after they started operations, so was impacted when they rescheduled flights. Air Belgium is a new airline that intends to operate a fleet of Airbus A340-300s between Charleroi (outside of Brussels) and China…
Continue reading: Air Belgium Inaugural Flight Takes Off With 15 Passengers
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I'm disappointed you took the free CX flight instead of fly this to review.
Did you really need those miles... or another CX review...
@ keitherson -- I didn't take the Cathay Pacific flight. I took their offer to rebook on Air Belgium in the future. I just couldn't make the rescheduled inaugural since I had other plans for that date.
I’m curious, when are you rebooked to fly them? I’m interested to see a review of this airline.
If you want to save money: Rebook in premium economy.
You’ll end up in the same full flat J seat with a different soft product.
I was on the Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Manila this morning which was at the gate next to the Air Belgium plane. I smiled to myself when seeing it after all of your articles on them. We were delayed taking off due to some thunderstorms so I had quite some time to observe. I didn't get to see how many passengers were preparing to board but they did seem to unload a completely full load of cargo. Perhaps it is time they forgot about passengers and just got into the cargo business instead. Their livery looks great but I do pity any start up airline trying to make money at these fuel prices with a 4 engined aircraft.
One flight to Hong Kong. No partners. Difficult to make reservations. No feeding traffic. A fuel guzzler plane.
I feel sorry for the people who thought this was a good investment, and the airline employees.
I could be wrong, but I understood that the vast majority of their pax will be Chinese tour-operator / charter customers. In which case your interpretation of low pax counts is misleading – they wouldn’t have had to rebook many people for the cancelled flights because the tour operator would have done this en masse. This also explains why GDS access is less important.
Long time lurker here - but I’m booked to fly with them on Jun 15 and 21! Happy to report back on how it goes
Airbus A340-300s are notorious gas guzzlers. Airlines can't get rid of them quick enough and they aren't popular at all in the used jet lots.
Question: "How do you earn a million bucks starting up in the airline business?".
Answer: "Spend ten million!"
I'd love to see their business case......