Aaah April, a new month and a new season, spring is in the air not just in everyone's mind but also at the Air Belgium managment. As usual air Belgium will release it's new summer schedules on may the 1st so it's about time we will present where we will be flying as of next month.
When we think about summer, we immediately think about fun and sun aswell since summer is the time of year when everyone is going on his or her holiday. Of course this also has it's reflections on the Air Belgium schedules and most changes happened within the leisure schedules, so here's quick review of the changes amongst our holiday maker flights.
- Our daily flight Brussels - Tenerife Sur will be upgraded from A321 to an A330-200 on saturdays to cope with the higher demand.
- The daily flight on Brussels - Malaga will be upgraded to an A300-600R on mondays and fridays to offer more capacity than the current A321
- Our flight to Valencia will now have the same schedules every day compared to different times every day last year so planning a holiday should become easier.
- the twice weekly flight from Brussels to chania will be upgraded from an A320 to an A321
- Madeira will get an additional flight on saturday operated by an A321 to increase the frequency compared to the current twice weekly A320 service
- Marseille will get a daily morning flight operated by an A320 whit a new evening flight 5 times a week operated by an A321
- Gran Canaria will be served daily from Brussels from now on
- Rhodos will get an A300-600R on sundays instead of the A321
- flights to Lanzarote will be reduced to 3 times weekly on an A320
- Marrakech will be increased to a 5 times weekly A320
- Nice will get a daily morning flight and a 5 times weekly evening flight all operated by A320
- Ibiza will now get an A300-600R 5 times a week
- Gerona will now be served 3 times a week using an A320
Of course we at Air Belgium do more than just improve schedules to current popular leisure destinations, we also keep on looking for more new and exciting destinations. That's why we will launch flights to Tivat in Macedonia once weekly using an A320, to Sal on Cabo Verde with a weekly A300-600R and to Rijeka in Croatia with a twice weekly A320. furthermore we will increase capacity on some North African destinations combined with serving a new destination with a once weekly A330-200 service, these destinations are Marsa alam via Sharm El Sheikh and Alexandria via Hurghada in Egypt and Tabarka via Monastir in Tunisia.
Of course not only Leisure will have changes even on Business and Connection routes following changes will occur:
We will now have night-stopping aircraft in Moscow and Sint-Petersburg so we will be able to offer better connections on our long-haul network from these destinations. The Istanbul and Helsinki flights will be upgraded to an A320 while the Sint-Petersburg flight will be operated by an A319 from now on.
Copenhagen will see an additional frequency giving a total of 3 return trips every day between the Belgian and Danish capital, improving the flexibility for business travellers.The new noon flight will be operated by an A319.
After the bankrupty of Euroflyer our Brussels - London Heathrow flights have seen a steady decline in the amount of Passengers using them and as a result it is no longer viable to keep on continue operating these services as of may the 1st. We feel that by offering services to Gatwick and City we have enough coverage of the London Area. To offer people living north of London a better alternative we will add an additional frequency on the Brussels - Birmingham flight, bringing the total to 4 daily return trips on an A320.
Our regional routes will see some small changes aswell. We will be launching a 4 times daily Service between Dublin and London City to offer a more convenient connection between both Capitals and we have good faith that this Dash8-Q400 operated service will be a big succes just like all of our current London-City services.
We will also reduce the frequency on our Jersey and Guernsey services while upgrading Aberdeen to a twice daily CRJ200 service form the current once daily A319.
Furthermore we will be launching a once daily Service to Gdansk in Poland using a CRJ700.
Our long-haul network will also be extended with some key destinations to provide an even better worldwide coverage.
- We will start daily services to Jakarta via Ho Chi Min City (Vietnam) using an A330-200
- We will also starting daily flights to Dakar and Abidjan with an A330-200
- Our Teheran service will be upgraded to an A330-200 in June with the addition of an intermediate stop in Kuwait.
- In July we will be starting our new Dublin-New York service which will be our first major long-haul connection not leaving from Brussels, for Equipment swap reasons there will now also be a new Brussel-Dublin flight using the A330-200 bringing the total to 4 flights on this connection.
- We will also start a daily flight to Manila with a stopover in Bangkok using A340-300 equipment (will be upgraded to A340-600 later this year)
- Our Taipei flight will be operated by MD11's again because of a shortage of A340-300 equipment until enough A340-600's will be delivered.
We are also happy to announce that our first A340-600 has left Brussels for Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires this morning, officially launching the A340-600 in Service here at Air Belgium. Our second A340-600 connection will be Brussels - Sao Paulo - Santiago de Chile estimated to be a full A340-600 operation in late may.
Except for the increase of flights using own operations we have made some new code-sharing contracts with new partner airlines, opening a lot of markets for Air Belgium which wouldn't be able to be served economically using own equipment.
Together with Air Lambert we will be launching a shuttle service between Brussels and London Gatwick, offering a total of 6 daily flights on this connection. We hope that we can now offer an extremely good flexibility on this route and aim to be the prime choice for every passenger flying it. Air Belgium will operate 3 daily flights using A330 and CRJ equipment whit air Lambert operating the other 3 flights using A32x equipment.
It's also announced that during the summer season Air Belgium will lease out 2 A319's and 1 A321 to air Lambert.
We are also happy to announce a new partnership with one of Germany's prime va's, Team Onyx. We hope to learn a lot of this 9 year old va which is worldwide know for it's excellent organization. We have signed a code-sharing contract on all flights between Germany, Austria and Switzerland and the Air Belgium hubs in Brussels, Dublin and Luxembourg.
We will be able to also offer flights to Berlin Tegel while having a larger offer to Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Geneva and Zürich. As a result Air Belgium will move from T2 to T1 in Frankfurt and from T1 to T2 in Munich.
We have also signed a code-sharing contract with Western airlines on all flights from Belgium to the US and on flights inside the US to offer a wider offer of US destinations which will be released soon.
And Last but not least we have signed a contract with Trans Congo which will enable us both to offer a daily non-stop flight on Brussels-Kinshasa. 3 weekly flights are operated by an Air Belgium A340-300 and the remaining 4 by a Trans Congo A340-200. We are also looking into code-sharing on domestic and intra-african flights with them.
There have been more talks with other va's for possible code-sharings but since we haven't reached firm agreements with them we wont mention who and where.
To improve loadfactor and popularity, we have started a new advertising campaign. It will run under the slogan "escape to the skies" and accentuate the fact that air Belgium is a full service airline focusing on the best comfort and service in the skies and wont include any price fighting actions.
We will be working on and releasing more about this campaign during the coming months, but here are already the first ads:
So this was the news for this month, but we will have once again a new release with loads of refreshing news next month including the reveal of the strange package delivered by Recaro to us this morning
Air Belgium is a Belgian virtual airline operating from hubs in Brussels, Luxembourg, dublin, Antwerp, Liege and Ostend using a fleet of bombardier, Airbus and boeing aircraft across the globe. for more information please visit www.flyabb.com