JOVAN2 wrote: ↑25 Jan 2023, 18:20
sn26567 wrote: ↑25 Jan 2023, 15:00
It will not happen. The Eurostar (new name of the Group) will not stop at Brussels Airport. Their CEO Gwendoline Cazenave said yesterday at the
press conference presenting the new Eurostar-Thalys integration that the airport is not on a high-speed line and is well connected to Brussels Midi and their customers are satisfied with that situation..
Thanks for the information.
But I do not find the passage about the "BRU stopo" (or non-stop) in the press release.
Talking about "
their customers":
If you mean BRU Airport (Mr. Feist) and BRUSSELS Airlines (Mr. Gerber) , they are clearly
UNHAPPY about the airport NOT being connected by HST. . See interviews in DE TIJD. I hope they continue lobbying and put pressure.
Knowing that soon
short haul flights like CDG-BRU will be part of the past,
and knowing that BRU and SN depend largely on African traffic from Paris and France to justify their African network
knowing that
transferring from train-to-train in Brux-Midi, where elevators and escalators are more
out of order than working well.
knowing that the train-infrastructure at BRU is there to allow a Thalys (or Eurostar) stop , for a few minutes like in AMS Train station.
Knowing all this one can only call it
an uncommercial and un-logical decision.
NMBS/SNCB has had 10 very low-level CEO's in the last 25 years, so a long-term and world-vision like in AMS & with the NS Dutch Railways, is not in their brains..
Sorry to swear on this forum, but stop being so aviation-centric... When the CEO of the Eurostar group talks about "
their customers" of course they don't mean BRU or Brussels airlines, they mean their customers taking the train. And of course they're satisfied with the current situation as only a limited amount of their customers has the airport as their destination.
And short haul flights like CDG-BRU might be a thing of the past soon, but they currently only exist because tickets from CDG to African destinations are cheaper than direct flights from BRU. No-one flies CDG-BRU or BRU-CDG because they live in Brussels and need to be in Paris, or live in Paris and need to be in Brussels.
For the feeding of the African network from the rest of France: the Thalys network stops in Paris, the rest is served by the TGV: different company, so you'll have to transfer at Brussels-South railway station anyway. And that's not even up to the NMBS/SNCB to decide if the TGV should continue to Brussels airport.
The Eurostar group has little to no interest in going to the airport: it takes more time, and it will give them hardly any extra passengers: people flying to BRU from far away and going to a Eurostar-destination would otherwise fly directly to CDG, AMS or LHR, and to Rotterdam, Lille,... I guess there aren't enough passengers to justify the additional time, additional cost,... To RTM they'll be fighting the hourly IC-service.
The NMBS/SNCB already had a decent offering at the airport with trains going to their "hub" in Brussel, and long-distance trains going to other destinations (Hasselt, Antwerp,...), so from that point of view also little incentive.
If Brussels airport (for whatever reason), or Brussels airlines (for connecting passengers) would like a regular high speed train service to stop by the airport, the effort has to come fully from that side. They're the only ones benefiting from it.
I think it's not up to the railway companies to provide better (long-distance) connectivity to the airport. It's up to them to provide better long-distance connectivity in general, but their "hubs" are not at the airports (not even at AMS, FRA,...), so it makes sense their alternative for short-haul flights is based around fast trains going to city-centre stations. And from those city centres, there are a lot of options to get to your final destination, even if that final destination is an airport.