Brussels Airlines in 2020

[Deejay]

If SN is going to be considered as a "normal" network airline, when is it going to be fully integrated in the LH Group booking engine ?

If you try to book a triangle: BRU-GVA-VIE-BRU, for instance,

on the SN website, they let you fly the GVA-VIE over BRU with SN, while there are several OS direct flights daily

and on the LH website, you need to go over FRA with LH to do the GVA-BRU, they don't propose the SN flight, (which is codeshared with LX !!) ....

they achieve this so well for LX and OS, where it's seamless .... why not for SN ?

[Guillermo]

Received the LH June schedule last week. A majority of the Brussels Airlines African destinations are available via FRA. Did not catch any route information, though .. FRA will be fed out of BRU, only available starting in FRA and direct flights or via African hub(s) ?

[rwandan-flyer]

"The proposals on the table are unacceptable" say the unions of Brussels Airlines

The long negotiation marathon started on Monday at Brussels Airlines. After the announcement last week of the restructuring plan which aims to cut 1,000 jobs, unions and management came together to start negotiations under the Renault procedure, which applies during collective redundancies. Phase 1 of this procedure focuses on consultation and information. Unions have over 100 questions to ask management. Discussions that promise to be difficult.
https://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detai ... d=10504271( French)

[Atlantis]

Received the LH June schedule last week. A majority of the Brussels Airlines African destinations are available via FRA. Did not catch any route information, though .. FRA will be fed out of BRU, only available starting in FRA and direct flights or via African hub(s) ?

Probably it is bcs SN would like to start flying as from 15th June but only European destinations.
LH is still flying to BRU from FRA. So they could pick up those pax for the moment. It will "end" as from the moment that SN will fly again by themself to Africa.

If everybody needs to fly first to FRA then SN would not need any long haul plane anymore

[Passenger]

Not off topic really, rather a historical reminder as a side note :
https://www.brusselsairlines.com/en-be/ ... hansa.aspx
LH could, in theory, have acquired the remaining 55 % of shares of SN, but with such a clause in the agreement
The price for taking up the remaining 55 per cent depends on performance-related factors so that the cost for complete acquisition of Brussels Airlines could amount to a maximum of 250 million euros.
LH had all the reasons in the world to let SN be worth as little as possible at the time of the full take-over.
They waited and were allowed to wait six years to buy the remaining shares for… 2 million euro ?
Who, on the other side of table, was naive enough to accept such a provision in the take-over agreement ?

Such clause is not abnormal for partial take over with call option. And the contract wasn't made by "naive" people. Lawyers and accountants worked on it, on request of Davignon, Van Innis, Theo Peeters, Gustin and others. And 100% sure: they knew what it meant. Besides, what's your problem with that low amount? Lufthansa didn't buy SN Airholding from the Belgium state, but from Belgian investors. And the less Lufthansa had to pay to former owners, the better for the Lufthansa Group.

The reason why Lufthansa had to pay only 2,6M, is because Brussels Airlines didn't show good "performance related factors" at the contractual date. Lufthansa would have been more then happy when they had to pay 250M: that would mean that Brussels Airlines was a goldmine after full take over, with each year millions of dividend. Since the takeover, not one Euro dividend was paid to Lufthansa. Reason: there is a cumulated loss of 100M. So even if Brussels Airlines would make a profit of 100M in 2019 (quod non), no dividend could be paid.

[oldblueeyes]

Such put/call clauses are usual if take overs are done in steps. Typically there is a valuation method agreed in advance ... something like operational profit multiplied with an industry typical multiplicator plus accumulated assets minus accumulated debt.
It is the duty of the management to perform in such a way that the company valuation mechanism agreed is maximized. for example by growing trough debt, if the value created is higher.
I doubt that the selling shareholders were badly advised- such deals are quite normal and the top law firms advising them are not newbies.
So it is rather the management team that didn't performed as expected. And if we realize this, than maybe we realize that Lufthansa did not fired Gustin because of being very patriotic, but simply a bad manager. Even if in the branding issue he might have been right, his operational performance before as he was serving mainly the interests of the old shareholders was miserable.
And now a man with these qualities is advising the government.

[Jetter]

Not off topic really, rather a historical reminder as a side note :
https://www.brusselsairlines.com/en-be/ ... hansa.aspx

LH could, in theory, have acquired the remaining 55 % of shares of SN, but with such a clause in the agreement
The price for taking up the remaining 55 per cent depends on performance-related factors so that the cost for complete acquisition of Brussels Airlines could amount to a maximum of 250 million euros.
LH had all the reasons in the world to let SN be worth as little as possible at the time of the full take-over.
They waited and were allowed to wait six years to buy the remaining shares for… 2 million euro ?
Who, on the other side of table, was naive enough to accept such a provision in the take-over agreement ?

Etienne Davignon, he also sold Electrabel to Suez and ran Fortis into the ground.

[Jetter]

Where is the government going to spend 20% less on? Education, healthcare, pensions? All things that also benefit the same SN employees that you want to tax less. It’s way too easy to just propose huge tax cuts without saying what consequences you accept. Also the powerful unions in Belgium would not agree with enormous austerity, yet they are supported by many SN employees. If much lower taxes is what SN employees want they should turn their back on the current unions to not be hypocritical.

Belgium has the highest taxation rates on employment, but it's also a country where the return to the citizens is one of the lowest in Europe. Are SN staff members also to blame for this?

Anti-union people would invent anything to be against them without thinking further than their nose. Of course because they don't need them. Or don't have any.

I'd bet everything I have you'd be crying behind your union if you were a SN staff member today.

Don’t the staff of SN and the people of Belgium vote? You’re acting like the taxes are taken by some evil person and end up in a black hole, but it’s all done democratically and if the Belgians would want it to change they’d have to vote for different politicians. There’s a saying: “every country has the government it deserves”.

If the staff of SN don’t like high takes the last thing they should do is rally behind their union, the unions in Belgium are one of the main culprits of high takes. To know that you only have to watch their reaction whenever the government proposes austerity measures.

[LJ]

Etienne Davignon, he also sold Electrabel to Suez and ran Fortis into the ground.

To be honest, Fortis was Lippens, AFAIK Davignon came after the downfall to clean up the mess.

[Passenger]

Etienne Davignon, he also sold Electrabel to Suez and ran Fortis into the ground.

And he established an airline after 9/11 and after Sabena's bankruptcy. Providing a job to a few Thousand people at the airline and the airport.

[teddybAIR]

Don’t the staff of SN and the people of Belgium vote?

Oh boy...where to start?!

[sn26567]

And apparently, I made a mistake in the format of my above reactions. Nobody's perfect. Errare humanum est.

I may have corrected. Except for the bold characters (not sure whether they were intended).

[oldblueeyes]

Eurowings is by far less mistakes and thought, if we look at it properly.

Let's start with the typical design of low cost airlines - they work with new aircraft, take pilots from private schools paying their own expenses etc.

The first brick in Eurowings in the "old" Germanwings. Well, it never made money, as it was a worng design - typical legacy from the early 2000s like Buzz and other done by legacies. Leisure P2P at legacy cost - not a winning proposition, but strategically blocked the expansion of the LCCs in the home market.

Next piece of stone are the decentral bases of Lufthansa -> the reason to rebrand it to the "new" Germanwings. Again, something like a "bad airline" - enheritated with 300 Mio EUR annual losses, old pilot contracts, old aircraft and a client pool which had to be educated that they were not flying Lufthansa anymore.
The result before aquiring the Air Berlin portfolio was to bring these combined entities to a black zero, so at least 300 Mio EUr better than before.

Next step is the Air Berlin portfolio. For sure this was a double move - from one side incresing market shares in decentral bases and blocking agressive competitors, on the other hand performance. Here we have to look to the business model and to the peers - basically the assets were taken nearly for free but everybody had to manage the mess and losses enheritated by AB -> combined losses raised to 250mio EUR annualy (we have to include the long haul here as well)- but if we look on Easyjets losses at half fleet (180 mio in year 1) and Ryanair at take over of Niki plus ramp up to less than 30 aircraft, than the initial losses per taked onver market share would be half.

Now the long haul. Yes, this was a mess. I see it as the trial not to miss a trend - we speak during the last years about Norwegian, Joon, Level, Rouge from Air Canada etc... a lot of sub brands, with different objectives and rather low rate of success. Let's see here that legacy peers were not necessarily more successfull, admit that the execution was bad as hell with the mess of the leased 332 and that meanwhile Swiss expanded with Edelweiss a better concept. If we add Jumo to this and the fact that for market concentration reasons a purchase back of Condor was rather not possible a painfull but on the long run rather intersting option. As of today, project Ocean might be more actual than many believe.

Just for comparison - IAG bought a clean sheet LCC design, with Vueling emerging after the collapse of Spanair and AF/KLM still fights for Transavia with growth restrictions from the mainline unions.

Eurowings was never a clean sheet airline. And for collecting all the waste that has to be cleaned up and supporting the experiments, the job done is not bad at all.

[oldblueeyes]

And? He grew by 20 Mil Pax or 70 planes / Q400 not counted. Should he have left the market to the competition?
Yes, it takes some time to harmonize operstionally up to 5 AOC per Base but this crisis will Help to do it eben earlier - Q400 is out, the enheritated TUI contract is out etc
You need also time to Clean up the mess Brussels has - they were also not forced to grow above their regional airline size, right?

[rwandan-flyer]

Brussels Airlines to lay off 310 people in Belgium

Last week, the company announced a restructuring plan that threatens a quarter of its staff, up to 1,000 jobs

https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... -belgiquee

[BrightCedars]

There is so much passion around this topic, perhaps there should be two threads about Brussels Airlines, one for actual news and facts and one for the interesting and never-ending debate.

The situation is extremely complex and some people currently have to take decisions affecting people's livelihoods and the survival of their business.

Even before the pandemic SN was up for a hard reboot, I find it amazing that they can still stick to a shrink of 30% of fleet with a shrink of 25% of staff. To me this is a sign that there is a plan for a rebound in the coming years, if things go in the right direction of course.

Airlines have been struggling with the climate questions in the last couple years and there is a need to reinvent themselves, the sanitary situation, grounding and economic fallout are catalysts of the new game board.100 year-old players (Avianca, BA, KLM Qantas) and global or regional systemic carriers (Emirates, US airlines) could see their end.

Being able to save a Brussels-based, because let's admit it the whole point of this carrier is to server the smallest global city on the face of the Earth, for a mere 3-400€ million is a reasonable investment in the local economy if you ask me.

Sure we could let them go bust, or start something shiny new, but it will cost more and take another 10 years to reach a cruising altitude, whilst not being any better immune to the next sanitary, economical, security or existential crisis that will inevitably hit.

Brussels Airlines is the airline of Brussels, the B is for Brussels before Belgium.
Perhaps it would suffice to write Brussels only on the planes as some suggest.

[Passenger]

When Sabena was still around the government and public opinion were saying that staff salaries were too high, “let Sabena go bankrupt and let’s start over” they said, and that’s what happened, even though salaries at Sabena were already less than other surrounding countries.

No: the government and the public opinion (who’s that, by the way?) did not let Sabena go bankrupt because of too high salaries. Sabena went bankrupt because of what happened on, and just after, 11th September 2001. On that day, aviation came to a sudden standstill. Sabena was already criple: they had a huge cumulated loss from the past and they had lost a lot with the Swissair debackle. On 2nd October 2001, a Swiss court ordered the grouding of Swissair. For the Sabena administrators, it was clear that they wouldn’t recieve the millions that Swissair had to pay to Sabena, and therefore Sabena asked on 3th October 2001 protection against creditors (“concordat/concordaat” at that time). The trade court agreed, but asked a business recovery plan. That plan included a salary cut for everyone. The pilots rejected a salary cut and went on strike (if I remember good, it was a first one of 24 hours and a second one of 48 hours). As a direct result, no new bookings came in and firm bookings were cancelled. Add to that the cost of the strike (hotels and reroutings for stranded passengers), and for Fred Chaffart it was clear that his recovery plan couldn't be realized. That knowledge forced him legally to file for bankruptcy: 7th November 2001.

Is history now going to repeat itself? I’m afraid so, when I read this: “…In the case of Brussels Airlines the employees are already some of the lowest paid in the western world, how much more can you squeeze out of them, especially since Brussels Airlines is already a, so called, slimmed down lower wage airline after Sabena?...”

Is that quote just a remark from someone who works for a competitor and who wants to rub salt in the wound? Is it what the Belgian trade unions think? Or is it really what the employees think?

[sn26567]

Brussels Airlines to lay off 310 people in Belgium

Last week, the company announced a restructuring plan that threatens a quarter of its staff, up to 1,000 jobs

https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... -belgiquee

This is relatively good news, except of course for the people who'll have to leave: only 370 layoffs (310 in Belgium and 60 abroad). But how can a plan suddenly shrink from 1000 to 370? And this, without knowing the results of the negotiations between Lufthansa and the German and Belgian governments, which could completely change the picture.

The original article in De Tijd (quoted by Le Soir) can be found here (although the title is misleading with 310 layoffs instead of 370: are employees abroad less important than those in Belgium?):

https://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/luchtvaa ... 27950.html

[Poiu]

This is relatively good news, except of course for the people who'll have to leave: only 370 layoffs (310 in Belgium and 60 abroad). But how can a plan suddenly shrink from 1000 to 370? And this, without knowing the results of the negotiations between Lufthansa and the German and Belgian governments, which could completely change the picture.

The plan didn’t change!
370 people are made redundant.
Other measures to reduce the headcount are:
Contractors and temporary contracts are not renewed.
forced retirement, early retirement and forced part time.

[Guillermo]

Brussels Airlines to lay off 310 people in Belgium

Last week, the company announced a restructuring plan that threatens a quarter of its staff, up to 1,000 jobs

https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... -belgiquee

This is relatively good news, except of course for the people who'll have to leave: only 370 layoffs (310 in Belgium and 60 abroad). But how can a plan suddenly shrink from 1000 to 370? And this, without knowing the results of the negotiations between Lufthansa and the German and Belgian governments, which could completely change the picture.

The original article in De Tijd (quoted by Le Soir) can be found here (although the title is misleading with 310 layoffs instead of 370: are employees abroad less important than those in Belgium?):

https://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/luchtvaa ... 27950.html

People, 'resources', FTE (full time equivalents = 100% working hours), etc. .. are all being mixed together. For 1 FTE, you can easily have 2 working people (or more) if both work for only 50%.
The hypothesis is that sacking people can be avoided by pushing a max of employees to leave the company voluntarily. When BA HR tells the employees 'they would understand staff leaving under the given circumstances because they can no longer cope with changing conditions, new ways of working, etc. ...' then you know where their hopes are. Pushing people to the exit does not equal sacking, although the end result will be the same. It is all about semantics ..