Poiu wrote: ↑31 Jan 2018, 23:44
Aren’t you forgetting the reduced security costs (hidden subsidies for BRUAIR), which were based on obsolete pax numbers to exclude most of the competitors?
It is clear that there is lobbying against AB behind the scenes, that was one of the reasons of today’s press conference. Impossible you say? Think JAF which never recieved traffic rights for flights to FIH.
Both examples are pure federal government matters and a such have no relation whatsoever with a statement that BRU did a proposal which "prohibits them to compete with other airlines". If that would indeed be the case (and not like I described it with the incentive scheme which is very clear and transparent), Air Belgium would file an official complaint against BAC and BAC would have no feet to stand on. I think we both know why they kept it just with a nasty statement towards them, don't we?!
For the other cases. The security charges were indeed a big failure in trying to compensate the Ryanair subsidies in Charleroi, but were clearly and solely aimed at this airline. All 3 major Belgian airlines were treated equally and proportionally. However none of the 3 ever used the money anyway, it was only 'paid' for a few years and all paid back voluntarily before the formal conclusion of the EC investigation as the outcome was cristalclear from the very beginning.
Regarding FIH and TUI, seriously?! For years SN used all 5 traffic rights that Belgium had in the bilateral agreement and set up a special construction with a Congolese airline to 'lease' the 2 Congolese traffic rights to be able to serve FIH daily (everyone always claims on this forum it is so important to fly daily, well yes it is, it's one of the main competitive advantages of SN in that market). Then finally the bilateral agreement was extended so that Belgium got the rights for 7 flights per week (after years and years of lobbying by the Belgian authorities and SN!!) and then you think these should have gone to another airline at the expense of SN's hard work to get those rights after paying way too much for them for years?! An airline with no experience whatsoever in that market, without a hub network so unable to serve any transfer flows, without any knowledge on the extreme difficulties of the DRC (operating there, working there, even simply living there as a Western person with foreign interests, etc) solely to serve the local Belgium-DRC VFR market? Because no they wouldn't even be able to capture the local business market to a significant extent, many Congolese still like bling bling (cheap in reality or not, it has to look luxurious or expensive in any case) and JetairFly/TUI is just not that. So yes I can fully understand the comment here about their sales department being in panic about it, having to fill 2 weekly widebodies with local VFR traffic in such a difficult market completely unknown to them. Would that have been in the best interest of Belgium, just for the sake of competition, and by that hurting SN's position on the global market to/from the DRC?
The only reason for SN to be really against Air Belgium is because they are fishing in the same pool of Airbus pilots. But in that perspective VLM is (much) worse looking for A320 and A330 pilots.
And even if there is lobbying from their side (nobody forbids anyone to lobby anyway, it is the job of thousands of people every single day in Brussels), that has nothing to do with AB's choice for CRL which is clearly purely based on costs.
