Air Belgium Cancels Flights, Pushes Back Launch By Over A Month

You say none of this comes as a surprise yet you booked anyway and built an itinerary/trip around these flights and are now annoyed at them pushing their launch? Since you suspected this may happen why book so early in the first place?

@ Revatron -- It's always something I'm conflicted about with new airlines, routes, and seats. I want to review the experiences as quickly as possible, but there's always the risk of things changing, as has happened here. The only way I could make this trip work was to make it pretty quick due to commitments I had before and after.

I'll be out some change fees probably. Of course I'm annoyed, but this isn't the end of the world for me, as it was a risk that was worth taking.

You should fly Hainan Airlines from Brussels. They fly from Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Maybe this will give you a chance to try Cathay Dragon first class.

Be interesting to see what free ticket you could get out of them on another airline for your date.

On the hook for change fees? Just accept their offer for a seat on another airline. You'll probably get a business class seat on a real airline for the price of the air Belgium ticket.

Now they get bad marketing also...not a good start. It took Norwegian years to get the Russian permit

Why don‘t you just let them rebook you on Cathay? I now regret that I didn‘t book a cheaper ticket on Air Belgium and could have gotten a free upgrade to CX.

The easiest is to accept their offer of flying on another airline so your return trip won't be disrupted. Consider reviewing that flight. Without looking who flies there, consider Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, EVA (AMS-TPE-HKG), etc.

Bon voyage, Lucky!

I would take the option of either being rebooked on another carrier and run fast! Their business model was questionable from the beginning and judging from this fiasco, there seems to be a distinct possibility that they may not get off the ground at all. Cut your losses and move on!

if you had been on a US3 you would just be thankful to not being beaten up. Americans have ceded so much power to corporations and people that love the party that loves the corporations.

I think Air Belgium probably has been making *too much money* on their long haul charter operations for companies like Suriname Airways and others. Why start scheduled flights when the long-haul charter market is heating up for peak summer travel season? If Air Belgium can pick up some decent Europe to Africa, Caribbean, etc. charter contracts, why even bother with scheduled svc.

I flew the KF J product last Saturday, when they did a 3h testflight over Europe (was just 50€, for charity)
https://www.airbelgium.com/en/flytogether

Inflight product was kind of ready, with a few optimalisations to be made to the soft product (there wasn’t yet real champagne etc).
IFE had only a few movies, no music/TV series.
Food was okay, better than I expected.

Seat was quite good, make sure to have a throne/window seat or an aisle seat with the big armrest on both sides (every seat that has the foot cube of the seat behind under the armrest).

Crew was motivated but had few experience with J service (most come from Jetairfly/TUI and Thomas Cook).

Nice detail: they’ll market a premium economy product via agencies/touroperators. People who book this will initially get the J seat, without choice of meal.

Economy gets only a complimentary drink during the meal service.
Alcoholic drinks and drinks after the meal service are chargeable (e.g. 2,50€ for a can of coke).

I wish them much succes but think their business can only be sustainable if they run break even on Chinese tourgroups.
Most of the high yield Traffic will go to cathay, and not flying on FRI/SAT ex BE is also not good for leisure Traffic.
Many (Flemish) people also dislike (the location of) Charleroi airport.

Interesting how this will develop. I hope I’ll be not one of the few ones that flew Air Belgium at all...

A calculated risk in booking an unknown quantity start-up. Win some, lose some but live to fly another day, a different route.
Why not try Finnair...or the new(ish) J on KLM

For those wondering "Lucky, why did you choose such unreliable company to fly with?" "fly 'normal' airlines".

He flew all the other airlines on numerous occasions. Simple google search can prove it if you don't want to search archives on here.

Lucky likes to review new airlines. Therefore he went to such lengths to even fly Air Belgium.

Consider flying with Scoot from Athens to Singapore. They have Scootbiz so it shouldnt be much different than AirBelgium

They offered to reroute you which is good as I doubt they have Interline agreements. So they also need to reimburse costs to travel to Brussels and comp would be due if you arrive over 3 hrs later and you were notified within 2 weeks - 300 euros

Well i'm booked on the 4th of June, let's see if they can fly out then, and if you join me, think business class will be ours 🙂

I like how their May schedule is listed as "Sold out"...
They have some June/July dates also listed as Sold out - I guess automatic re-booking of passengers from April?

@Richi - Scoot Biz is basically a domestic first class seat in the US with slightly less pitch. Air Belgium at least had staggered flat bed seating.

But I second the Scoot option.

@Lucky - you haven't really flown 'low-cost, long-haul' before and definitely not on Scoot! If Sam Chui can do it in Air Asia, then you can too!

You could do that, then pop up to Osaka on Singapore Airlines new 787-10 regional J class seat, then pop over to Hong Kong as planned for the Hong Kong Airlines flight.

Air India operates a fun fifth freedom 787 flight from Osaka to Hong Kong so you could, conceivably catch that.

Surprisingly enough, Debit is already providing low quality trolling.

Also, is it just me or is Air Belgium starting to sound like the BALTIA of Europe??? *Thinks*

I second @Paolo's suggestion: see if Air Belgium will reticket you onto the KLM flight out of AMS. You could keep your itinerary intact as AMS is a relatively short train ride from Brussels; and, it's been awhile since you've reviewed KLM's business class.

@ Lucky

Clearly EC 261/04, but how do you enforce compensation from an airline which at this point is still largely virtual ?
My best guess, in case of difficulty, is to seize the Belgian agency in charge (there is one per country) and make sure that they pay the EU 600 once they are afloat (if ever...).

Even the late (somewhat) lamented SABENA were better than this pack of jokers.

Sorry to hear about the cancellation! Who have thought that they are so struggling badly ..well, let us go further..It is your decision to try them in the future, meaning rebooking for a later date and get the EU 261 compensation ..but I personally have not got a good feeling and trust to do a rebooking in a later date with them..They should improve themselves first!..Meaning let them rebooked you with the next possible flight to HKG or PEK..try the outmost best choice..not only from BRU but other choices like CDG, AMS, FRA etc..
And if it is possible or as options do not forget the other airlines you want to try Air Algerie, Fly Dubai, Middle East Airways..
I just looked through AH..it has a connection BRU-ALG -PEK. As you have not tried their C product it will be a great chance. They have their A330-300 with the herringbone seat on board..ftom PEK xou can fly Cathaydragon to HKG in F class.

Correction, AH has a A330-200 eith the new C seats

I would take the refund. I'm getting Baltia Air vibes.

Lucky you could get from Kiev to London and just change it and go KBP - London or just go from BRU - London and then Fly QF9 new 787 LHR - PER then PER - SIN - HKG on SQ's new 787-10 Dreamliner (as they fly the 787-10 to Perth) to meet up with your Hong Kong Airlines flights back to the US.

Have you actually told us how or with which airline your flying back stateside from HKG??

"... though I’d think Brussels would be considered a different market than Charleroi. "
It depends if you look at it. It is a different market in terms of target audience (leisure travellers vs professional travellers, mainly), but BRU and CRL are considered the same market in terms of airports in the neigbourhood. Even CDG and AMS are considered the same market. When EK didn't fly to BRU after the terrorist attacks they rebooked me to/from AMS but didn't provide transport between BRU and AMS as they claimed it to be the same market.

Well, let's just say that I'm looking forward to reading all about Air Belgium in Cranky Flyer's annual "airlines we lost" post at the end of 2018... 😉

Take a refund and rebook later when they really get going. The combination of reasons for delay would indicate real problems . Russia is irritated by EU sanctions so probably this overfly permit is going to take a long time. Remember that Brussels is the seat of the EU so maybe Russia is ''giving the finger ".