Today, 16 February 2018, the Belgian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) granted a Belgian registration to the first two Airbus A340-313 aircraft of start-up airline Air Belgium, founded by Niky Terzakis, former CEO of TNT Airways. These aeroplanes will be registered OO-ABA and OO-ABB.
The two aircraft were built in 2007 and were previously operated by Finnair before being taken back by Airbus in a deal to sell Finnair A350 aircraft. They are currently stored in an all-white livery at Lourdes-Tarbes airport (LDE), where acceptance test flights were carried out in recent weeks.
Hereunder is the copy of the Belgian register for the first aircraft:
An Air Operator Certificate (AOC) is expected from the Belgian CAA in the next few days, and Air Belgium plans to launch 4-weekly flights from Brussels South Charleroi to Hong Kong at the beginning of the summer season, on 26 March.
According to some sources, the first A340 should arrive at its Charleroi home base on 23 February.
I wish them best of luck sincerely. But unless they offer extremely competitive fares, I don’t see where most passengers will find this airline attractive. They offer zero connections to other European cities so it’s difficult to fill a plane on such specific route without a feeder route system.