Brussels Airlines Expanding A330 Fleet, Updating Cabins

Sorry Ben. Brussels business seat sucks. Just flew jfk/bru and seat was totally uncomfortable. Too short, flat seat cushions. Only worse seat was the connection we had to ath. It was European J, with it being only the first row as “J”.

While the SN J product may look “decent” it’s poorly maintained. On most flights you will find 3-4 seats blocked off because something isn’t working on it. Sometimes they’ll only find out a seat has issues after it’s been allocated to someone and they’ve occupied it, with no other seat for them to switch to. I’ve seen someone having to sit 8 hours in a flat seat (they have those inflatable seats where you can adjust the firmness) and the FA just gave them a couple of extra pillows to sit on.

As a Belgian I avoid SN at all times. I fly more than Ben for business year round and for ages SN practice enormous costs to any destination and second, I don't need flights to the African Continent, since years I even don't waste my time on looking for a fare with them. I also don't get it why they are about the only Carrier in Western Europe who don't have any connection with Latin America, while there is a Huge market between Belgium and Brazil i.e.. If you wan't to fly out of BRU to any Latin American country you have no option of making a stop.

Oh, it is OVER for Air Belgium (if they even "began" in the first place)

I realize this is about Afric routes but since they are "expanding Long Haul" I wonder if they will add any East Coast USA cities. Especially since there's not a lot of direct flights USA - Africa, it would make sense to offer a thru flight East Coast - BRU - Africa

I mean take the train to AMS if you want to fly to Latin America lol the post is about their african expansion!

Belgium has a population marginally bigger than that of Czechia or Greece, the majority of which lives less than 3 hours away from AMS, CDG, and DUS. The only reason it can sustain a national airline with long-haul flights is the huge amount of business travel generated by people working for/with/around EU/NATO/SWIFT etc. Fares for direct flights from/to BRU do sometimes border on the insane, precisely because lots of pax travel on OPM. On the other hand, BRU is a very convenient hub, particularly for travel between Northern and Southern Europe.
It's much less stressful than having to navigate the likes of FRA.

Brazil is a big place, you're better off flying via LIS and getting straight to your destination as opposed to flying to GRU and switching terminals, or even airports, in order to catch a domestic flight. Same goes with MAD and the rest of Latin America.

As of now, they only offer BRU-JFK and seasonal BRU-IAD.

I definitely disagree about the quality of the Brussels business class cabin, at least in my experience. Last week we flew BRU-IAD and were subject to an aircraft change to a dated Eurowings-liveried aircraft with angle flat seats 2-2 with no space between them and an outdated 15+ year old entertainment system without touch screens. The cabin was awful, torn and dirty. My wife's seat was actually broken before the flight, the mechanics spent 15-20 minutes fixing it. When commenting to customer service after the flight, the response is that its their "normal" plane and cabin. If so, any refurbishment would be a step up.

If not for LHG, this airline could never survive (and it didn't--SN collapse after billions of taxpayer money down the drain). Now, it only serves to strengthen LHG's monopoly in western Europe. The more recent business class is fine -- much better than LH but that's not saying much. But you play Belgian roulette since they swap it all the time with the crappy Eurowings 2-2-2 configuration.

The volkswagen of airlines said someone one time, they truly don't know how to innovate, so much for german creativity! Watch them fuck it up like they do all the time. Allegris already far behibd the likes of Qatar and Cathay, this revamp will be no different.

BRU-IAD is seasonal. BRU-JFK is the only year-round flight to the US. United does a much better job of connecting to the US with year-round flights to EWR, IAD and ORD. And the Polaris seats are way better than SN J.

"While Lufthansa has dozens of new wide body aircraft on order, as you can tell, Brussels Airlines isn’t getting any of those.
Instead, I suspect the airline will get more secondhand A330s from Lufthansa, just as long haul leisure airline Discover Airlines is also getting used A330s."

As an African, I find it a bit offensive that the airline group (LH) is only willing to expand into Africa with used aircrafts, and it dedicates new ones primarily to European/North American routes. It's comes across as though Africans are not worthy of the newer planes, a bit racist.

Maybe if you people stopped trying to kill gays and stopped killing elite women athletes in cold blood, you'd get a trip from an A350-900 or a nice new 787-9. It's pretty clear that Africans haven't given anything to civilization since the smart people left 140000 years ago.

JFC; keep the racism at home, grandpa.

Still a crap airline based at a crap airport. God forbid one might have to transit BRU.

How is it racist to point out barbarities Uganda's attempts to juridically murder LGBTQ+s or the culture of FGM that occurs in multiple countries across Western and Central Africa, not to mention the horrors perpetuated by Boko Haram?

@Rozellevm,
Enjoy your AMS and your train. I wan't to fly.

@ Throwawayname,
In case of Brazil you're right for tourism. For business you only go 99,9% to GRU.