I've written extensively about Air Belgium, the startup airline that operates flights between Brussels Charleroi Airport and Hong Kong. The airline has three A340-300s in their fleet, with a fourth A340-300 to be delivered soon. As of now they operate a single flight between Charleroi and Hong Kong 3x weekly, though they also operate some…
Continue reading: Air Belgium Makes Some Interesting Claims About Their Success
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If they really start flying to Zhengzhou, Taiyuan, or Wuhan they could probably make money even if the plane flew empty because the 2nd tier Chinese cities are throwing subsidies at any foreign airline willing to bite to fly long-haul flights there.
It says they think of direct flights to Cebu and Tokyo, and flights to Seoul through HKG. Plans to increase the number of weekly flights to HKG to 4 flights have been cancelled
The original article says that 80% of BUSINESS passengers are from the north of Belgium, not total passengers. And Belgium is a divided country, huge cultural differences between North and South so that is what the CEO was referring to.
You ve been writing a lot about this airline and i dont understand why??are they sponsoring you?? I think most of your readers will never fly this airline and arent interested a bit.
Charleroi is a main city distinctive of Brussels,its like you calling Nottingham/londin airport.
"so they really must be making up for it on other flights"
Or even just "making it up"!?
Seriously though, is there any way outsiders can verify load factors?
@Mo. I will likely not fly Air Belgium ever (or TAAG, or 90% of these airlines) let alone in first class. But, I still like reading about them which is why I like this blog. Im interested in the Air Belgium story becuase the story is interesting to me. Will they make it? If so, what is their strategy?
So, should Lucky take a poll to decide whether he writes about Air Belgium? Or we can pick and choose what we want to read from this free blog/newsletter?
Hey Mo:
You're evidently not a regular reader.
Ben is fascinated with just about ALL weird start-up airlines -- and the weirder the better. If you go back a ways, for example, there are about a zillion posts about La Compagnie. Ben managed to snag a seat on their second flight, and posted the first professional review.
I should also point out that Ben -- very obviously -- doesn't care whether you, I or any other reader is interested in this sort of post. He does it because he loves it. Maybe there's an adrenaline rush?
Slight correction: 80% of *business* passengers come from the north of Belgium (Flanders). The article doesn't say anything about economy passengers, which may well be predominantly Chinese tour groups.
@Mo - the official name of the airport is Brussels South Charleroi Airport. It's 29 miles from the Brussels city centre (per Wikipedia), the same distance London Luton is from central London. (London Stansted and London Southend are both further from London than Charleroi is from Brussels.)
And Charleroi is only a city of ~200k people, so its not surprising they'd want to associate their airport with the country's main city.
@Mo - I'm interested, as are plenty of other people...
As to the people always accusing them of money laundering - can you explain how they're laundering the money? If they're making a loss then how can they use any of it? Does a business not need to be profitable on paper for that to work?
Unless you're suggesting they're using fake suppliers?
@Jack Actually a lot of people speak Dutch In Belgium ,however I think Ben was referring to a Dutch website.You might want to read the article properly before trying to be a smarty pants ( sorry for the strong language).
@Jack - Dutch is one of the three official languages of Belgium (with French and German)
It's actually the official language of the Flemish (Flanders) region which is just under 60% of the country.
Flew them 3 weeks ago in premium economy. Experience was solid and average load factors were approx J15% - PE20% - Y65%, mostly Chinese travel groups. I have some pictures of the experience incase you want.
Hi Lucky
Stewart is right.
The ( Dutch) website says that the CEO says in the Belgian (French language) newspaper Le Soir that he is surprised to see that 80 % of business travelers is from the North of Belgium (Flanders, Flemish part, Dutch speaking). That might be surprising in a way because that region is closer to Schiphol Amsterdam, plus has Brussels airport in it.
On the other hand, Flanders is where most of the economy is located and distanced are soooo relative in Belgium (CRL is merely a 40 km or so from BRU).
I could do you a favor and look for the original interview and translate myself but I think we all agree this is too much trouble for a non-issue, an airline that will soon cease to operate;-)
Too bad that quite some tax money was poured into it...
on the money laundering.
Use black monney to buy tickets and report the cash flow as white monney.
only downside is that you cant realy use cash for this.