Although traffic has shown signs of recovery in recent months, Brussels Airport closed off the year 2009 with 17 million passengers and 450,000 tonnes of cargo carried.

Passengers
The economic crisis has caused passenger numbers to drop by 8.2% on pcp, following two years of strong growth (7% in 2007; 3.6% in 2008) (17.8 million passengers in 2007; 18.5 million in 2008).
Nearly all segments including intra-European business traffic, leisure traffic and even low cost (bankruptcy of Sterling, Sky Europe and MyAir) lost between 8 and 10%. On average over the year long-haul traffic declined by 0.8% but showed a positive growth of 3.7% in the second half of the year.
In December the airport welcomed 1,136,000 passengers; 1.1% down on pcp. The persistent snowfall in the last two weeks of December thoroughly disturbed air traffic. Nevertheless December showed the best year-on-year growth rate in 2009. Without the negative impact of the winter weather December would have been the first month with a positive growth, estimated at 0.8%.

Cargo
In 2009 Brucargo handled a total of 450,000 tonnes of cargo: a decrease by 32.1% on 2008. Integrator cargo volumes suffered badly from DHL's move to Leipzig, whereas all-cargo traffic declined following the demise of Cargo B and the decline of imports and exports as a result of the crisis. Even cargo carried on passenger aircraft showed negative growth in spite of the fact that it recovered well in the second half of the year.
With 38,500 tonnes handled in December overall growth upped to -10.6% compared to 2008, driven mainly by the cargo volumes carried on passenger aircraft which grew by a spectacular 46%.

Movements
2009 registered a total of 231,668 movements: 10.5% down on 2008. As the decline is registered mainly in the segments of the small regional carriers and cargo flights, the overall seat capacity is less impacted.

New initiatives
For 2010 Brussels Airport is looking forward to the effect of Brussels Airlines' entry into the Star Alliance. New airlines too have announced flights as from this summer. Air Canada is to start a daily service to Montreal, Icelandair opens a route to Reykjavik, United Airlines will operate a daily direct service to Chicago and the Chinese carrier Hainan Airlines plans a daily service to Beijing.

BAC news release, Brussels Airport, 20 January 2010

As it seems to go by unnoticed on this forum:

Unions fear price war on Brussels airport

Last Monday 18 jan 2010 a personel meeting was held at Brussels airport. Direct lead to this meeting is the soon to be taken decision to allow a third handler on tarmac at Brussels airport. The meeting was held by all unions representing the employees of Aviapartner and Flightcare.

The idea of a third handler arose last summer when both the employees of Ap and Fc went on strike complaining against poor and unsafe working conditions. State secretary Etienne Schouppe mentioned the third handler as a solution against simultaneous strikes of Ap and Fc. He also hopes that equation between price and service will improve.

Unions, however, fear a third handler will mean just one thing: even worsened working conditions for the employees. It will inevitably lead to lay-offs and pay cuts as 70% of the handling cost are wages. Contracts will be shortened. Training times and team numbers minimized resulting in more (severe) accidents and safety incidents. In addition, the investment in maintenance and new, more ergonomic, equipment will be put off or delayed. As we can see already today.

At the end an indefinite notice was given that there will be a strike when a third handler on tarmac is allowed. The meeting did not interfere with the normal operations.

On the 1st of January bomb threats were discovered in different places around the airport mentioning the date 1/1/10. The threats were scribbled on mirrors in the toilets and elevators of the airport.

With the airport being on a heightened state of alert following the foiled bomb attack on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight on Christmas day, these threats were taken vary seriously. The airport security services as well as units of the federal police made every effort to take the necessary security measures and find the culprit.

In the course of the afternoon they succeeded in identifying the person who wrote the threats. He was a 40-year old Dutchman who was meant to depart from the airport later that evening.

Making a bomb threat - even a false one - is an offence. As the cost for the airport and its users of such an operation can amount to tens of thousands of euros, Brussels Airport always starts legal proceedings against the offender. This guarantees that a judicial inquiry will indeed be conducted and that the costs can be recouped from the offender. Such proceedings were also started in the new year's day bomb threats case.

BAC news release - 14/01/2010