Brussels Airport inaugurates triple boarding bridge with a one-off Emirates Airbus A380 flight

To offer greater comfort to its passengers, Brussels Airport is investing over €52 million to equip its Pier B with new boarding bridges. The large-scale project is an important step towards meeting the future demands of its customers, passengers and airlines and also to be ready for future technological developments in aviation. A triple boarding bridge has now been installed at gates 31 and 33 of Pier B, which will enable Brussels Airport to meet future demands from the airlines to operate with A380s. Aviation24.be was present during the inauguration of the triple boarding bridge.

Arnaud Feist, CEO of Brussels Airport, explains: “The inauguration of this boarding bridge is an important step in the modernisation of Pier B, which accommodates intercontinental flights. This triple bridge not only allows us to receive the largest aircraft in the world, the Airbus A380. It will also be used for long-haul flights, allowing passengers on wide-body aircraft to board or disembark much faster.”

The 24 boarding and deboarding bridges at Pier B date from 1992 and will gradually be replaced by state-of-the-art aerobridges to meet the general trend with airlines of operating flights to Brussels Airport with ever larger aircraft. Equipped with air conditioning and large windows, these new bridges not only have a modern look, they’re also more efficient.

Two thirds of the new aerobridges will be dual boarding bridges, which will speed up the boarding and deboarding process while offering greater comfort to passengers and enhanced operational efficiency for airlines. Next to the new triple boarding bridges at gate 31 and 33, the replacement of the 22 other boarding bridges will commence at the end of 2018. To maintain full operational capacity, the work will be rolled out in phases. The project will be completed around 2022.

To test out the facilities, Emirates Airlines is operating a one-off flight from Dubai to Brussels with an Airbus A380. Emirates captain Bjorn Moerman, from Belgium, proudly commented on this event on our Facebook page: “It is an honour to be flying the big bird into BRU today as captain. First landing in BRU since 2002 for me…”