Europe and the Middle-East

With the addition of Lanzarote as from October 31, Brussels Airlines strengthens its presence on the Canary Islands, where it will also fly to Tenerife and Gran Canaria this winter. To these last two destinations additional frequencies are added during the Belgian school holidays. With flights on Thursdays and Saturdays, Lanzarote is the ideal destination for both short and longer winter vacations in the sun.

Kiev will again join the network, as of December 16. Also new in the winter schedule of Brussels Airlines is the continuation of Yerevan, which was previously only offered during the summer season. Flights to Yerevan will be operated twice a week.

Furthermore, the Belgian airline’s offer for the upcoming winter includes following European destinations: Alicante, Barcelona, Basel, Berlin, Bilbao, Birmingham, Bologna, Budapest, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Faro, Frankfurt, Geneva, Gothenburg, Gran Canaria, Hamburg, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Lyon, Madrid, Malaga, Manchester, Marseille, Milan Linate, Milan Malpensa, Nice, Oslo, Paris, Porto, Prague, Rome, Stockholm (Bromma), Tenerife, Toulouse, Valencia, Venice, Vienna and Vilnius.

Brussels Airlines will offer flights to Greek destinations Athens, Heraklion, Kos and Rhodes and Italian destination Naples until the end of the autumn holidays.

In the Middle East, Tel Aviv and Yerevan will be served eight and two times a week respectively.

Africa and North-Atlantic

Following the high demand for winter-sun destinations, Brussels Airlines adds Hurghada to its network as of October 31, 2021. It will be the first time since March 2020 that the Egyptian destination is part of the airline’s network. Also, the north-African destination Marrakesh joins the network this winter as a new destination in the offer of Brussels Airlines.

Also during winter, Brussels Airlines continues to operate to its extensive Sub-Sahara Africa network including following destinations: Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Accra (Ghana), Banjul (Gambia), Cotonou (Benin), Dakar (Senegal), Freetown (Sierra Leone), Lomé (Togo), Monrovia (Liberia), Douala (Cameroon), Kinshasa (DRC), Luanda (Angola), Yaoundé (Cameroon), Bujumbura (Burundi), Entebbe (Uganda), Kigali (Rwanda).

Since the announcement of the US government to lift the current travel ban in November for fully vaccinated passengers, Brussels Airlines has noted a significant increase in bookings for its flights to New York (JFK). The airline has planned to operate four frequencies per week during the winter season and might add extra flights to the schedule during the winter holiday period if the market demand continues to grow.

As from 30 September, Marrakech will for the first time be part of Brussels Airlines’ offer. The Moroccan city will be connected twice a week with flights on Thursdays and Sundays. Thanks to the low chance of precipitation, this city with its wide variety of cultures is the ideal destination for either a weekend or a longer vacation in the sun.

For the first time since March 2020, Hurghada is again part of the Brussels Airlines network. As from October 31, 2021, the Red Sea resort will be served three times a week (Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday).

With the addition of Lanzarote as from October 31, Brussels Airlines strengthens its presence on the Canary Islands, where it will also fly to Tenerife and Gran Canaria this winter. To these last two destinations additional frequencies are added during the Belgian school holidays. With flights on Thursdays and Saturdays, Lanzarote is the ideal destination for both short and longer winter vacations in the sun.

As a result, revenue at Brussels Airlines fell year-on-year by 45% to 138 million euros in the first semester of 2021 (H1 2020: 252 million euros). The operating income of 147 million euros was 48% lower than the year before (lH1 2020: 281 million euros). The COVID-19 crisis forced Brussels Airlines – after a good start into the year – to suspend its operation almost entirely for the period between mid-March and mid-June 2020. Since then, the production level is significantly lower and not yet back on pre-crisis levels.

In the first half-year of 2021, operating expenses fell by 37% to 290 million euros, primarily due to the volume-related decline in the cost of materials and services (H1 2020: 463 million euros). Brussels Airlines has reduced expenses significantly thanks to its turnaround program, Reboot Plus, of which the restructuring phase is almost completed. However, remaining fixed costs continue to put pressure on the operating expenses.

Accordingly, the airline reports an EBIT of -143 million euros and an adjusted EBIT of -143 million euros for the first six months of this year. Compared to the previous year, the EBIT decreased from -211 million euros (H1 2020) and the adjusted EBIT from -182 million euros (H1 2020). Last year’s EBIT figure was impacted by a reduction of 29 million euros due to impairment losses on aircraft and rights-of-use for aircraft.

Due to the non-essential travel ban and the strict and continuously changing travel restrictions, the number of operated flights and passenger figures decreased even further. Compared to the first semester of 2020, which included a temporary suspension of all flights from March 21 to June 14, 2020, Brussels Airlines operated 55% fewer flights (6,295 flights compared to 14,114).  The number of passengers transported dropped from 1,590,448 in the first semester of 2020 to 676,372 for the first half of 2021. As to the seat load factor, the latter went down from 72.4% to 60.7% in the first six months of 2021.

Brussels Airlines’ turnaround program Reboot Plus consists of two phases: the restructuring and transformation phases. As the restructuring phase, which aims to reduce the fleet size by 30% and the workforce by 25%, is almost completed, Brussels Airlines is looking forward to investing in a sustainable and structurally profitable future. In that future, the reduction of the airline’s ecological footprint has a prominent place. On June 29, the Lufthansa Group Executive Board and the Board of Directors of SN Airholding have authorized the allocation of three Airbus A320neo aircraft to Brussels Airlines, which will leave the Airbus factory by summer 2023. These state-of-the-art aircraft, with significantly lower CO2 and noise emissions, will replace three older A319 aircraft. Modernizing the fleet is crucial to reaching the ambitious target of reducing the CO2 footprint by 50% by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels).

Due to the still volatile and highly unpredictable situation worldwide caused by the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, it is not possible to make forecasts for 2021 as a whole.

In comparison to the to be phased out A319 aircraft, the Airbus A320neo burns in average 11% less fuel and reduces noise emissions by 50%. Thanks to a significantly higher seating capacity (+27%), the fuel use per seat reduces by 30%. Compared to an A320ceo (current engine option), the brand new model uses 16% less fuel for the same seating capacity and thus reduces the CO2 emissions by 16%.

Brussels Airlines counts currently 38 aircraft in its overall fleet, of which eight long-haul aircraft of the type Airbus A330 and 30 medium-haul aircraft (16 A320 and 14 A319).

“We are still in a difficult period and also the coming months will be very challenging, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. We see an eagerness to travel and it is clear that many people do not want to postpone their long-awaited trip abroad with another year. Since mid-April, the booking figures have been showing us that many passengers are entrusting us with their travel once again. With 40% more reservations than the previous week, we saw a spike in bookings over the past seven days. The positive trends we see make us confident towards the future.”

•  Peter Gerber, Chief Commercial Officer at Brussels Airlines

This summer, the Belgian airline expects to offer 70% of the capacity it operated in 2019, being 60% for the short- and medium-distance network and 77% for the long-distance network. For the months of July and August, Brussels Airlines is preparing to welcome over one million passengers, although that figure remains difficult to predict due to the fact that many passengers are still booking last-minute. During the same months last year, the company welcomed roughly 390,000 passengers.

Top destinations this summer are situated in the south of Europe, to which Brussels Airlines is adding 150 extra flights following the high demand. The most popular countries are Spain (Malaga, Alicante, Barcelona, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands), Portugal (Faro, Lisbon and Porto), Greece (Athens, Kos, Rhodes, Heraklion, Corfu and Zakynthos) and Italy (Florence, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia and the new destination Bari). Also on the list of popular destinations are Croatia (Dubrovnik and Split) and France (Nice, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse and new destination Bordeaux).

The brand new destinations Tangier and Nador, offered by Brussels Airlines in partnership with ML Tours, are also doing well. So well in fact, that the number of scheduled flights to these destinations has now doubled: 4 flights a week as opposed to the originally scheduled 2 flights.

Earlier this week, Brussels Airlines relaunched its flights to the United States after a hibernation period of almost 15 months. The flights to New York and Washington D.C. on June 14 and 15 respectively were the first trans-Atlantic flights of Brussels Airlines since March 2020 and an important symbolic milestone for the airline. The Belgian carrier is now hoping for rapid easing of the currently applicable travel restrictions between the two continents to make travelling easy and accessible to everyone again.