Freight remains a friend
Air Belgium terminates passenger operations – not for the first time. Air Belgium is currently facing a high legal hurdle. It’s still searching for a permanent business focus, and sees its salvation in airfreight. It would appear to have had good experiences with a major shareholder from China.
The news released on 18 September must have felt like a very cold shower for many of Air Belgium’s 500 employees, and for those of its customers who had plans to travel on one of the airline’s four Airbus long-haul aircraft after 3 October. On that day the airline, which is based in Charleroi, Wallonia, 50 km south of Fiata’s World Congress venue in Brussels, ceased to operate its own passenger flights.
In future the company, which was only established five years ago, wants to concentrate on cargo flights and the business of wet-leasing out aircraft. According to the company’s management, staff from its passenger services will be employed in other business fields, if possible – provided that an application for creditor protection filed with a Belgian court is accepted. This would pave the way for management to find a solution regarding unspecified debts.
Something of a déjà vu
The relatively new company has already experienced quite a roller-coaster ride in its short history. The airline took off in June 2018, offering passenger flights to Hong Kong from Charleroi airport (CRL), which is also marketed as ‘Brussels South’.
However, the connections had to be discontinued after three months, due to a lack of demand, and Air Belgium was only able to stay afloat at that time thanks to its wet-lease orders. The resumption of this service, once pencilled in for the summer of the following year, was cancelled. The airline then turned its gaze westwards, where it served Martinique and Guadeloupe in the winter of 2019 – until Covid-19 put a stop to almost all global travel.
It was the time when many airline executives – including the management of Air Belgium – discovered airfreight services. Thanks to the experience gained in the field it was later able to establish itself as an airfreight partner of CMA CGM and even aroused foreign interest, primarily from the Hongyuan Group, a Chinese logistics company (see also page 8 of ITJ 17-18 / 2022).
A victim of circumstance
In 2022 the airline made a loss of EUR 44 million, which resulted in the threat of insolvency hanging over it. It was only averted thanks to a fresh financial injection from investors. This was followed by the next reorganisation, with passenger flights to South Africa and Mauritius. But even those are now over.
The travel business has become “chronically loss-making”, management has admitted, citing a whole maelstrom of external events into which Air Belgium has been sucked – Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, the increasing price of kerosene and high inflation. That’s why it will now concentrate on the B2B business.
This isn’t jumping in at the deep end. It’s based on three Boeing B747-8Fs, operated for the Hongyuan Group, and three converted Airbus A330 freighters. The four A330 passenger units, in turn, will be seeking new fields of activity anywhere in the world.