Brussels Airlines future and financial perspective

[RoMax]

SN6401 : BRU 06.05 - LIS 08.00
SN6406 : LIS 19.55 - BRU 23.35

Keep in mind those are TAP operated flights. This may defer on flights operated on their own, depending on the codeshare agreements. But what I said about this matter remains vallid on many routes.

[Passenger]

Actually, I don't think that Brussels Airlines has sold one single day return to Lisbon during the last three years. And they won't sell one this year neither, even if they would charge just 50 Euro. Simply because the flight schedule for such a day trip would be:
SN3815 (11h25-13h15)
SN3816 (14h00-17h45)

SN6401 : BRU 06.05 - LIS 08.00
SN6406 : LIS 19.55 - BRU 23.35

The lowest price is 569,33 euros. Lowest price asked, bflex economy price given.

On your advise, I wanted to book a cheap weekend to Lisbon, with Ryanair off course:
18 April, BRU-LIS FR-2925
21 April, LIS-BRU FR-2932

Ryanair : 432,08 Euro (362,08 Euro + 70 Euro for the suitcase for the mrs)

I think I'll book it with Brussels Airlines

[Flanker2]

Well you picked the expensive option of evening return on Monday.
Brussels Airlines is 623,33 for the same trip at similar schedule and it's not even their own metal.
Have a good trip, thank you for supporting the Belgian economy. You are my hero!

[airazurxtror]

On your advise, I wanted to book a cheap weekend to Lisbon, with Ryanair off course:
18 April, BRU-LIS FR-2925
21 April, LIS-BRU FR-2932

Ryanair : 432,08 Euro (362,08 Euro + 70 Euro for the suitcase for the mrs)

"Suitcase for Mrs" : it's thus the price for at least two pax ?
And it's on the higher-priced Easter week-end ...

[RoMax]

Just a suggestion, but can't we discuss something different than the ticket price of some random dates on the LIS-BRU route? SN is more expensive, I don't think we need a new example of that all the time to realise that.

[Passenger]

...SN is more expensive, I don't think we need a new example of that all the time to realise that...

Allow me to disagree. Brussels Airlines is sometimes cheaper and sometimes more expensive. Same applies for Ryanair, same applies for Vueling, for EasyJet, for Jetairfly, ...

On your advise, I wanted to book a cheap weekend to Lisbon, with Ryanair off course:
18 April, BRU-LIS FR-2925
21 April, LIS-BRU FR-2932

Ryanair : 432,08 Euro (362,08 Euro + 70 Euro for the suitcase for the mrs)

"Suitcase for Mrs" : it's thus the price for at least two pax ?
And it's on the higher-priced Easter week-end ...

Actually no: it's 432,08 Euro per person (plus 70 Euro for one suitcase, for the two of us)

[RoMax]

...SN is more expensive, I don't think we need a new example of that all the time to realise that...

Allow me to disagree. Brussels Airlines is sometimes cheaper and sometimes more expensive. Same applies for Ryanair, same applies for Vueling, for EasyJet, for Jetairfly, ...

On average you will still see SN is the more expensive choice. But actually that's the point of all this, it doesn't actually make any sense to compare random examples, it totally depends on the exact situation and requirements of the pax booking the ticket.

But hey, that was not the essence of my post...

[Flanker2]

I agree with Romax. SN obviously can't match FR's prices even though if you look long and hard enough you will find sporadic combinations where with the optional items, they will pan out cheaper...
Since I've gotten used to FR's pricing, I almost get a heart attack every time I browse for rates on SN's website... I remind you that I'm not rich nor poor, not successful nor unemployed, I'm the average Joe.

So let's move back to the main discussion, ie, SN and how it fits within the LH strategy and how they will/should progress from the actual turmoil.

[Passenger]

So let's move back to the main discussion, ie, SN and how it fits within the LH strategy and how they will/should progress from the actual turmoil.

It's impossible to have a serious (neutral) discussion when this is our starting point: "...SN obviously can't match FR's prices even though if you look long and hard enough you will find sporadic combinations where with the optional items, they will pan out cheaper..."

No sir. You don't have to look "long and hard" to find good rates. You see them immediately. And what's more: you get more in that fare then with Ryanair's fares: for SN-flights, luggage is included, preseating is included, check-in is included, friendly smile is include. So no hidden (non-compulsary) extra's like luggage surcharge, preseating surcharge, check-in surcharge, insurance (an opt-out with Ryanair)... You don't need that? Fine, then fly Ryanair for 19,99 Euro. But for an average holiday family trip of more then just a day trip to Lisbon, Brussels Airlines could well be cheaper then Ryanair. And perhaps Jetairfly wil be cheaper then - depends on the yield for the flight you need.

I almost get a heart attack every time I browse for rates on SN's website...

Yep, I know the feeling. I get the same risk for a heart attack when I read in the newspaper about yet another story of passengers in Charleroi who were initially refused because there was a spelling error in their first name: "We had to buy new tickets, and they charged us over 300 Euro's".

You want to discuss about "Brussels Airline future and financial perspective"? Fine, then start doing to. We still have to read the first relevant remark from Flanker2, flanker, NCB and others.

[FlightMate]

Come on, passengers. A lot of comparaisons have been made by media, magazines, and SN is significantly more expensive than FR, on average. As flanker says, it is possible to find cheaper fares with SN (specially when FR flights are getting full and SN's still open), but it is not the norm (yet).
Hell, sometimes it's cheaper to fly FR than SN in id90.
And same as you, I'd choose SN over FR anyday. But only because I don't have to pay the full fare

[Inquirer]

Okay guys, we got it now, thanks.
I think everybody knows by now that ALL airlines offer good deals: in general you can find them at LCCs mostly during the week, at network airlines mostly over the weekend.
It's normal, since they both try to fill their planes as good as they can and during their quietest periods, they each offer promotions to do so.
Let it happen that the quiet periods are not the same at both types of airlines given their very different customer profiles and you can see how airazurxtor posts for the zillionth time an attractive day trip fare on Ryanair (are you never going on a weekend, BTW? How sad, you miss out on so much nice things in life), whereas Passenger can then once again pull out an admittedly quite expensive Ryanair fare over the weekend, and yes, weeks consist of 5 weekdays and only 2 weekends, so LCC have more of those fares to offer, albeit those are not really always the most convenient schedules then for a city trip.
Let's stop it here, shall we, because we know the mechanism now, thank you, so there's really no need for yet another round of illustrations to what is a widely known industry practice. besides, as a side note: let's not focus on price alone, as a product (even a commodity) has more aspects than price alone, or otherwise we'd all be driving our little Dacia to the Colruyt for our weekly shopping, passing by streets full of empty shops and having to write down our parking lot number upon arrival as all cars on the Colruyt parking would be identical Dacia's too then, all filled up at the DATS petrol station after the shopping, of course!
This may have been how things were back in the USSR, but not how they are in our economy and neither will they be in aviation, believe me.


As to the other stuff which has been posted here, I suppose it is okay if I just write without quoting, as there's just too much clutter to go through otherwise and several people posted pretty much the same things, IMHO.

1- As to CEO Gustin talking about Juba:
To me this shows they are looking into destinations which many here thought they weren't considering.
I don't think this particular destination will be on their map tomorrow, but those around here who like to make a business case for one or another new destination in half an hour on this forum and then say it's a pitty it hasn't been considered, might conclude from it that their case may very well have been considered in much more detail than they can possibly imagine a long time ago already, yet that it has been dismissed for reasons they are totally unaware of. (I think that's more or less what Passenger has been saying, and with some logic to it, IMHO)

2- as to the quality of a market analysis:
Well, I agree, a market study is just that, a study, and the proof of the pudding is in it's eating.
But I think that's pretty much the same with the back of the envelope market studies posted here, isn't it?
I read a lot of claims ("I guarantee you it will be profitable"), but other than that, it's just quotes and references to other airlines operations. Not saying it's a stupid idea, just saying it's more of the same, but to a less scientific level than what a market study by Brussels will have likely come down to.
And yes, maybe some of their past market studies for new routes proved to be only so-so and overrated the potential of some of their recently launched routes. Does that make them idiots then? Or could it be they simply choses the best option of a whole set of only so-so destinations, including some of the ones pushed here as "guaranteed successful"?
Just saying...

3- Many seem to feel that a bunch of Asian routes are good for feeding the African flights:
To me, there seems to be a huge detour involved in many connections from Asia to Africa over BRU that I can think of, something which will be a problem if you happen to have a whole range of competitors offering identical flights while having their hub right on the most direct track: those competitors may be asking a lot of money for their tickets now, but they can far more easily slash those prices should the need arise as they have much shorter flighttimes to offer AND on top they are known to be very price aggressive thanks to the very low costs of doing business in their home countries. (not to call it state sponsoring);

4- let's not turn the world upside down, shall we?
Yesterday I adviced to look at things from a group's level, not just from BRU alone.
If you start asking for say 3, 4 or more Asian feeding routes (which are very long routes; how many planes is that then?), only to feed a few planes heading to Africa, wouldn't it then start to make more sense from a group's level to simply move those few African flights to a place where that Asian feed is already operating in full force, not just a few, with the added benefit of also adding other global feed to it?
See what I mean? I dont think that is what you are after, flanker?
But it may very well be the outcome if you start to make such a case too strongly, which is why I think they are right in focussing first on selected transatlantic routes as their first intercontinental feeding routes, with the added benefit the USA are still our biggest trading partner AND point to point demand is going to be much bigger than to say some Chinese town I can't even pronounce the name correctly, so a shareholders meeting will far more easily sign off on such a project, than it will on any Asian one and it will not very likely come to the conclusion to turn things upside down and move your African routes to the main hub instead.

Well, that's basically it for me. Thank you: sorry for the sobering dullness, but that's how things really go, most of the time, not just in aviation, but in most sectors.

[airazurxtror]

Thank you for giving us (for the zillionth time) your global vision of aviation, industry management and life, as you see it all. It is most interesting.

[convair]

Ach Inquirer, your cartesian comments are killing our dreams once more! I don't thank you for that!
Personally, I favor a rather progressive expansion of the l/h network and I'm not calling for 4 or 5 new destinations immediately but I believe (maybe wrongly though) that shifting 1 daily Tokyo to BRU wouldn't hurt LH while filling an obvious gap. Sure it's a long flight but it can be done fy rotating aircraft in combination with some of the shorter AFI flights,I certainly don't have to tell you that.

Now, I think we can all accept that discussing pricing policy is within this topic. One thing that one has to take into account is that SN needs to attract connecting pax with competitive pricing too. This means that, on the european sector, a pax connecting to a l/h flight is often flying for free, if not for a negative price! I have personally witnessed that many times with other airlines, e.g. AF offering BRU-USA flights via CDG cheaper than the very same CDG-USA flight. To the point that French pax would take the Thalys from Gare du Nord to Brussels South station only to immediately take the TGV back to CDG on their BRU-USA ticket ( I can tell you on business class it's often really worth it and AF would cancel their reservation if they don't "fly" the first sector, i.e. the rail part from Brussels South station to CDG, which I believe they can't do any longer).
Of course, this only applies to part of SN's european destinations, but it means that, for those flights, the money has to come from the O/D pax, partly(as many as possible) from high-priced business trips, the remainder(as little as possible) from low-priced tourists trips whom they merely try to fill up the plane with.

That shows again, as Inquirer rightly reminds us hereabove imho, that LCCs and "legacy" airlines are aiming for very different markets, even though they're all trying to tread on eachothers' feet occasionally and maybe will do so more and more in the future.

[SabenaForever]

Please Guys.... This is a topic about the future and financial perspective of SN! If you can not stand it, open a new topic RYR vs SN! But come on every topic becomes a bashing thing on FR or SN... Stop it!!!!

Moderator will you please remove this quotes this has nothing to do with this topic!!

[sn26567]

Please Guys.... This is a topic about the future and financial perspective of SN! If you can not stand it, open a new topic RYR vs SN! But come on every topic becomes a bashing thing on FR or SN... Stop it!!!!

Moderator will you please remove this quotes this has nothing to do with this topic!!

Deleted too many posts that had nothing to do with the subject of this thread. And I will continue deleting every post that has only the shadow of a sarcasm or personal attack. Before banning the authors!

[Flanker2]

4- let's not turn the world upside down, shall we?
Yesterday I adviced to look at things from a group's level, not just from BRU alone.
If you start asking for say 3, 4 or more Asian feeding routes (which are very long routes; how many planes is that then?), only to feed a few planes heading to Africa, wouldn't it then start to make more sense from a group's level to simply move those few African flights to a place where that Asian feed is already operating in full force, not just a few, with the added benefit of also adding other global feed to it?
See what I mean? I dont think that is what you are after, flanker?

I think that traffic rights would impede that... after all, the whole value of SN is about traffic rights between Belgium and African coutnries, inherited from the Sabena era.
But I'm also afraid that that is what LH could do,... ie wait to acquire traffic rights between Germany and African countries to move SN's African ops to FRA.

China can be done on a daily schedule, Japan takes more than 24 hours.
About the too few planes heading to Africa, well I think that if SN plays it smart, they could gather enough traffic to operate some of the routes direct by removing triangles, resulting in an expansion in Africa.
The A321 NEO isn't that far away, which could also serve several destinations in West Africa directly with 160-180 seats.

3- Many seem to feel that a bunch of Asian routes are good for feeding the African flights:
To me, there seems to be a huge detour involved in many connections from Asia to Africa over BRU that I can think of, something which will be a problem if you happen to have a whole range of competitors offering identical flights while having their hub right on the most direct track: those competitors may be asking a lot of money for their tickets now, but they can far more easily slash those prices should the need arise as they have much shorter flighttimes to offer AND on top they are known to be very price aggressive thanks to the very low costs of doing business in their home countries. (not to call it state sponsoring);

This is an impression that I also have, but the only indicator is great circle track, the shortest distance on the Earth. It will depend on the route and SN actually has the advantage regarding West Africa, where they are most present.

The following shows best that Belgium is positioned very well for Japan to West Africa...
It also shows that DXB is well-positioned for China-Central Africa.. yet EK is covering so little in West Africa, where SN is everywhere.
The highest yields are on the Japan-Africa routes...




To me however, the most sustainable is the airline that can combine both Europe-Africa and Asia-Africa.
What we should remind ourselves is that although these routes are high yield, the traffic in itself isn't huge. Hence, it's necessary to capture the best of both markets and Belgium has a much better position than TK and EK to do both.

Last but not least, I can assure you that rich Chinese and Japanese pax choose their airline.
And if they have choice between flying to Africa on a Belgian airline with a stop-over in BRU and a Turkish airline with a stop-over in IST, the price difference must be huge or else they will go for SN/BRU.


Regarding route studies, as you say, I'm not saying that those done by SN are idiotic. Obviously they have to base a new route on statistical data and predictions. But this is where SN can learn a thing or two from FR.
FR often manages to fill 189 seats between two remote spots in Europe which have no link at all and no one could have ever imagined... In fact, FR proves that the exploratory approach yields the best results.
I think that SN was also pleasantly surprised with their trial of the BRU-HAJ route, which no one could have ever imagined to work out so well...

I'm not saying that SN should go all-in, but a newer, premium-heavy A332 with the range to do BRU-NRT could be a good investment to try out some Asian routes. If it doesn't work out, they can still use the A332 somewhere else.

[cnc]

Last but not least, I can assure you that rich Chinese and Japanese pax choose their airline.
And if they have choice between flying to Africa on a Belgian airline with a stop-over in BRU and a Turkish airline with a stop-over in IST, the price difference must be huge or else they will go for SN/BRU.

TK is an award winning and very well known airline and last time i found IST a very pleasant airport for transfers so i wonder what reasons you have in mind to make SN/BRU so superior in the eyes of the asian pax

[flightlover]

This would be a good reason for a direct flight BRU/japan:

In 2012, with regards to Belgian exports of goods, Japan was the 20th client of Belgium, and the 3rd in Asia, after China and India. Pharmaceutical products represented 17% of all Belgian exports to Japan, making Japan Belgium’s second largest market outside of the EU in this sector (after the USA). Transport equipment represented the second largest category of exports (17 %), followed by food and drinks (10%). Belgium is the 5th largest exporter to Japan among EU Member States.

With regard to imports of Japanese goods in Belgium, Japan is the 10th largest supplier of Belgium, and the 2nd in Asia after China. Transport equipment is the largest category of imports, accounting for 45% of all imports, followed by machinery and equipment (19%). Belgium is the 4th largest importer of Japanese goods among EU Member States.

Belgium is a country of choice for Japanese investments in Europe. Japan is the second largest non-European source of foreign direct investment in Belgium after the United States. Some 300 subsidiaries of Japanese companies have been set up in Belgium. They employ directly more than 25,000 people. About 20% of Japanese companies in Belgium are active in the automotive industry.

With close to 80 subsidiaries present in Japan, the Belgian industrial presence in Japan is concentrated in the sector of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnologies, followed by ICT and the automotive and materials sectors.

Source: http://countries.diplomatie.belgium.be/ ... relations/

But then again, does this guarantee sufficient traffic?
High yield cargo can always fill the belly and help towards profitability.

[Flanker2]

Last but not least, I can assure you that rich Chinese and Japanese pax choose their airline.
And if they have choice between flying to Africa on a Belgian airline with a stop-over in BRU and a Turkish airline with a stop-over in IST, the price difference must be huge or else they will go for SN/BRU.

TK is an award winning and very well known airline and last time i found IST a very pleasant airport for transfers so i wonder what reasons you have in mind to make SN/BRU so superior in the eyes of the asian pax

Well I don't mind TK at all and would fly it anytime.
However, you will find it very difficult as I found out, to convince a Japanese average person or Chinese businessmen, to fly with TK.
We tend to forget it, but Turkey is a developing country and ranks 90 on the HDI index. In Japan and China, this has an exotic connotation. In other words, it's a third world country, so you avoid its airline.
In recent times, thanks to marketing, more and more Japanese are trying it out when they need to O&D to Turkey, but if they have direct routings with a Japanese carrier or a European carrier, they will take it over a transit in Istanbul. This is why TK has difficulties with its yields on Europe-Japan and along with Russia's Aeroflot, usually pan out cheapest of all (most of the time).

This is not something I imagined, it's real.

[Established02]

very difficult as I found out, to convince a Japanese average person or Chinese businessmen, to fly with TK"

A few years ago I flew IST-ICN with TK. The back of the plane was dominantly filled with Koreans.