Brussels Airlines in 2025

[longwings]

Besides, do you think Lufthansa Group spread of multiple airlines would invest several hundreds of millions in new A333 cabins in the coming years for unreliable and old aircraft that are no longer competitive?

For some reason, we talk past each other... I do agree with most of your comments, and I see the dollars and cents, literally, daily.

Newer aircraft have their own issue as anyone pays attention knows. It doesn't negate that aircraft age is a factor in fleet performance, even if it is not the most important factor. I don't know what else to say that I haven't said already.

So far I have not read a clear explanation proving otherwise?!

Look up the cost of a new A321neo and you'll understand why no one is seriously considering the idea a random airline should buy a couple to try them out in their network on a trial basis. And that's before considering the cost of training pilots, cabin crew, maintenance crew, on the new aircraft, planning new maintenance and handling procedures.

[Ge203]

There's not much to train to be fair. It's essentially the same aircraft. Maybe a couple of extra procedures which could be implemented in the recurrent training, like the Single Engine Taxi-Out that is now being trained in the sim. Long Haul Cabin Crew are already trained for mixed fleet, so they know about the long-haul service, and I was told that some procedures in the cabin are already built to fit the operation of the A321, should it ever be introduced at SN.

There will be indeed extra costs : new cabin and its certification campaign which takes forever and is expensive, as you said the specific spare parts, the higher leasing for the capacity that the XLR provides,... and the list goes on. How many aircraft are we realistically talking about? 4-5? That's nothing, all these costs are not worth the investment for such a small fleet.

Why would there be a need to increase the frequency (to reduce the daily capacity available and the cargo capacity to a few tons) on the African network? The daily service (or close to) is a need on business destinations or where people make short trips. The African sector is not that type of demand.

The A330 are equipped with a maintenance kit allowing to perform basic maintenance actions in outstation, put this in A321XLR cargo bay and half of the cargo capacity is gone already (I'm exaggerating of course, but you get the idea). There's literally a truck doing the shuttle between Paris and Brussels every night to bring luggages to BRU because the A320 cargo hold is too small to fit them all. Nobody wants to loose the extra revenue that the additional luggage fee brings. The XLR works on network or destinations that don't need a lot of cargo space, the AFI network does need it.

And I'm probably missing a lot of other points which actually qualified people at SN and LH have made through their "project group". The XLR coud work, but is the risk worth taking? Probably not, otherwise it would have been done already.

[lumumba]

There's not much to train to be fair. It's essentially the same aircraft. Maybe a couple of extra procedures which could be implemented in the recurrent training, like the Single Engine Taxi-Out that is now being trained in the sim. Long Haul Cabin Crew are already trained for mixed fleet, so they know about the long-haul service, and I was told that some procedures in the cabin are already built to fit the operation of the A321, should it ever be introduced at SN.

There will be indeed extra costs : new cabin and its certification campaign which takes forever and is expensive, as you said the specific spare parts, the higher leasing for the capacity that the XLR provides,... and the list goes on. How many aircraft are we realistically talking about? 4-5? That's nothing, all these costs are not worth the investment for such a small fleet.

Why would there be a need to increase the frequency (to reduce the daily capacity available and the cargo capacity to a few tons) on the African network? The daily service (or close to) is a need on business destinations or where people make short trips. The African sector is not that type of demand.

The A330 are equipped with a maintenance kit allowing to perform basic maintenance actions in outstation, put this in A321XLR cargo bay and half of the cargo capacity is gone already (I'm exaggerating of course, but you get the idea). There's literally a truck doing the shuttle between Paris and Brussels every night to bring luggages to BRU because the A320 cargo hold is too small to fit them all. Nobody wants to loose the extra revenue that the additional luggage fee brings. The XLR works on network or destinations that don't need a lot of cargo space, the AFI network does need it.

And I'm probably missing a lot of other points which actually qualified people at SN and LH have made through their "project group". The XLR coud work, but is the risk worth taking? Probably not, otherwise it would have been done already.

Thx!

[oldblueeyes]

There is a much simpler approach.

SN has a certain room for investment/growth replacement.

Assuming this would be let's say 10 Mio in lease rates per year that could be used for expansion /upgauging and given average current industry lease rate metrics:

-Airbus 321LR - 500k USD/month
-Airbus 333 - 300k USD /month ( at age of those SN is getting from LH)

-Airbus 320 NEO - 400k USD/month
-Airbus 319 CEO - 200k USD /month ( to be deduced eg if upgraded)

What would be the sweet spot to maximize revenue, limit risk and increase market share as much as possible?

The scenario where you would likely earn more money at these investments wins.

[lumumba]

There is a much simpler approach.

SN has a certain room for investment/growth replacement.

Assuming this would be let's say 10 Mio in lease rates per year that could be used for expansion /upgauging and given average current industry lease rate metrics:

-Airbus 321LR - 500k USD/month
-Airbus 333 - 300k USD /month ( at age of those SN is getting from LH)

-Airbus 320 NEO - 400k USD/month
-Airbus 319 CEO - 200k USD /month ( to be deduced eg if upgraded)

What would be the sweet spot to maximize revenue, limit risk and increase market share as much as possible?

The scenario where you would likely earn more money at these investments wins.

I'm still wondering why other are using the A321LR at those prices?
How can Iberia by profitable on a competitive market like the US with a expensive plane like that?!
I'm mean the yield is so much higher on the African market!

[convair]

There is a much simpler approach.

SN has a certain room for investment/growth replacement.

Assuming this would be let's say 10 Mio in lease rates per year that could be used for expansion /upgauging and given average current industry lease rate metrics:

-Airbus 321LR - 500k USD/month
-Airbus 333 - 300k USD /month ( at age of those SN is getting from LH)

-Airbus 320 NEO - 400k USD/month
-Airbus 319 CEO - 200k USD /month ( to be deduced eg if upgraded)

What would be the sweet spot to maximize revenue, limit risk and increase market share as much as possible?

The scenario where you would likely earn more money at these investments wins.

I'm still wondering why other are using the A321LR at those prices?
How can Iberia by profitable on a competitive market like the US with a expensive plane like that?!
I'm mean the yield is so much higher on the African market!

I guess every airline does their own maths.
What I understand from the many very interesting contributions above is the fact that the African market is very specific due to the amount and weight of bags the average pax carries.

When I mentioned the occasional use of the A319 by SN yrears ago on the Dakar route, I did not expect the amount of replies it would bring.

I was not suggesting that the A319 would be a suitable plane for that operation, nor any other narrow body for that matter. But I realize that I should have added that the A319 was only used very seldom as a backup solution in case no A330 ( of the then very small fleet-3 or 4 at that time-) was available.

[RoMax]

Besides, do you think Lufthansa Group spread of multiple airlines would invest several hundreds of millions in new A333 cabins in the coming years for unreliable and old aircraft that are no longer competitive?

For some reason, we talk past each other... I do agree with most of your comments, and I see the dollars and cents, literally, daily.

Newer aircraft have their own issue as anyone pays attention knows. It doesn't negate that aircraft age is a factor in fleet performance, even if it is not the most important factor. I don't know what else to say that I haven't said already.

Well for a last time then I never denied age is 'a factor' at all.

My only key message in the end is that whenever a bad regularity of SN's long-haul network comes people refer to the age of the fleet as if that's the obvious reason, while that's simply not true. Of course if you take out all other possible causes of irregularties and you theoretically isolate only the age factor, you'll see differences in the ages of aircraft, but that's not the explanation behind SN's at times high rate of long-haul cancellations.

I'm not saying you personally say that, but really a lot of people here act as if SN is flying a basically unacceptable ancient fleet that's the 'obvious' reason for all the troubles that arise and they don't even realise how many old aircraft fly around at other airlines often even ones of which they have the wrong or at least very incomplete perception that they have a much younger fleet overall. Again as just one example: how many people here did realise LX has an older A320 fleet (incl the NEO's) than SN? The most profitable airline of the group, yet they still fly 10 A320's from 1996-1997. And that was my other message to some here and in general: look at some numbers before you make wrong assumptions.

[longwings]

There's not much to train to be fair. It's essentially the same aircraft. Maybe a couple of extra procedures which could be implemented in the recurrent training, like the Single Engine Taxi-Out that is now being trained in the sim.

Fair. My comment was more in line with a random airline onboarding a random aircraft to test it out on a few routes. My unfortunate luck that I didn't make it clear by bringing in an A321neo into an A320 operator. I guess I didn't want to be laughed at using the Max 10 as an example... though that's an aircraft Boeing may give away a few units to try and sell it, if it ever gets certified.

-Airbus 321LR - 500k USD/month
-Airbus 333 - 300k USD /month ( at age of those SN is getting from LH)

I'm still wondering why other are using the A321LR at those prices?

The prices above reflect only the cost of leasing the aircraft. An A321LR's operating cost per seat is reportedly half the A330's due to lower weight and more efficient engines. Despite the higher lease, airlines like Iberia can deploy an A321LR profitably (or so we hope) on long-haul destinations where they can't fill an A330 thanks to the A321LR's lower costs.

Where the math changes for airlines like Brussels Airlines is when freight capacity is a key factor. Given the difference in size, three weekly flights by an A330 carry more freight than a daily flight operated by an A321LR.

Freight capacity, and the revenue that goes with it if you can fill it, is why Virgin Atlantic flies an A350 or 787 with no passengers between BRU and LHR twice a week, or why in the recent past Finnair has operated wide-body aircraft with a half-empty passenger cabin on some days between HEL and BRU.

[oldblueeyes]

Just for sake of reality: Iberia has 1 A321XLR out of 8 ordered and 23 A359 with 344 and 27 A332 and A333 with approx 290 seats each. So we'll speak about an approx 1:10 ratio of 1.500 vs 15.000 seats.
By no means the 321 would be a core product.

[Homo Aeroportus]

OO-SFE on her way to AUH (>MNL?) as SN9901.
Hopefully this means that Golf will soon be back in service.

OO-SFJ remains on ground today though planned to run NBO. SN481 cancelled and booking page offers alternate with LH, MS....
The flight was cancelled yesterday 02FEB just minutes after her departure for JFK.

H.A.

[convair]

OO-SFE on her way to AUH (>MNL?) as SN9901.
Hopefully this means that Golf will soon be back in service.

OO-SFJ remains on ground today though planned to run NBO. SN481 cancelled and booking page offers alternate with LH, MS....
The flight was cancelled yesterday 02FEB just minutes after her departure for JFK.

H.A.

OO-SFJ now on her way to Dakar as SN203.

[Homo Aeroportus]

OO-SFE on her way to AUH (>MNL?) as SN9901.
Hopefully this means that Golf will soon be back in service.

OO-SFJ remains on ground today though planned to run NBO. SN481 cancelled and booking page offers alternate with LH, MS....
The flight was cancelled yesterday 02FEB just minutes after her departure for JFK.

H.A.

OO-SFJ now on her way to Dakar as SN203.

Indeed.
OO-SFD was to operate SN203 to DSS today but was replaced by Juliet.
Delta is sick since yesterday what led to the cancellation of SN359 to LAD-FIH.

H.A.

[Homo Aeroportus]

OO-SFE on her way to AUH (>MNL?) as SN9901.
Hopefully this means that Golf will soon be back in service.

OO-SFJ remains on ground today though planned to run NBO. SN481 cancelled and booking page offers alternate with LH, MS....
The flight was cancelled yesterday 02FEB just minutes after her departure for JFK.

H.A.

OO-SFJ now on her way to Dakar as SN203.

Indeed.
OO-SFD was to operate SN203 to DSS today but was replaced by Juliet.
Delta is sick since yesterday what led to the cancellation of SN359 to LAD-FIH.

H.A.

But even with the cancellation of OO-SFD, SN still has five (05) long haul services today, plus hopefully a sixth one as SN393 (ABJ-OUA) is now planned to go in a few more minutes, delayed by 2 1/2h.
Let's hope that Golf returns quickly from MNL.

H.A.

H.A.

[lumumba]

I hope they don't overload the schedule this summer to avoid the same problem.

[Flanker2]

I'm going to pitch in because I have long advocated for SN to use narrowbodies to/from Africa.
Now that everybody and their mother is using narrowbodies on longer routes, SN may be considering it but unfortunately SN has missed the boat in terms of doing it on their African network.

Arguably you don't even need an XLR, a regular HGW A321NEO would cover most of SN's African network and could also do TATL in a less dense configuration.
Unfortunately for SN, LH now has a hub in FCO which will gradually take over the Africa flying from SN, whether you like it or not.It won't happen overnight, it will be one route here, one route there and then one day you wake up and it will all be gone.
The narrowbody's to Africa will be flying out of FCO at lower staffing costs, lower operating costs, lower airport costs, directly, with better frequencies, better connections to the US. From FCO they can even fly the A223's deep into Africa.

If there is an opportunity for SN it's to reinvent itself as the low cost TATL specialist of the LH Group.
Flying narrowbodies to the US would give it a cost advantage and location wise BRU is ideal for that, but let's be real, DUS would also be an option.

As longwings points out, the A321NEO has unbeatable economics against something like an A333. 2.5tons an hour carrying 200 pax will beat 6tons per hour carrying 300pax anyday of the week. Not only that, the A321NEOcan fly the routes directly without costly triangle flights, it can do a 45min turn around and do more flights between the African flights.
The A333 hauls more cargo, but the A321NEO can make way more money flying the route without any cargo the A333 can carry.
I suspect the VS and AY widebodies were for some pharma shipments, but they won't keep doing it long term, they'll find better and cheaper ways to do it.
Big bags? The only reason people carried big bags to Africa is because of past scarcity of goods in Africa and to make the best of the high fares and generous bag allowance. Now whatever you can get in Belgium, you can get cheaper in Africa thanks to the Chinese. Make pax pay for extra luggage by reducing the allowance as in any other route in the world, pax will think twice whether they willpay more for more luggage or take the cheaper fare and take the savings.

[rwandan-flyer]

I suggest you to listen the last AviaDev Africa podcast. I put the link yesterday.

They explain why ITA uses A321Neos on Africa, and why the adding of more A330s is good for Brussels Airlines.

With the coming of more A330s, Brussels Airlines will able to split some services. Transit demand via Brussels and point to point demand to and from Brussels are enough to provide non stop service in the both ways to and from Dakar, Kinshasa, Nairobi, Abidjan and probably a little bit Kigali

It means more cargo and more pax for these destinations because city tagged doesn't cannibalize your loads.

To Nairobi or Dakar, it's better for Brussels Airlines to sell all its 293 seats instead to sell 146 seats for Nairobi and 146 seats for Kigali (BRU-KGL-NBO), or to sell its 293 seats to DSS iso 190 seats for Dakar and 103 seats for Banjul (BRU-DSS-BJL). On some days it's probably better for SN to sell more 200 seats to Kigali, etc...

Also probably the airline will able to increase flights on some (probably new) tag services such as Brussels Freetown Monrovia or Brussels Banjul Conakry.

Then with more capacity to Africa, United Airlines and Air Canada which play a big role to eed SN flights to and from Africa can bring more capacites during peak period to Brussels. More extra flights on some days.

ITA will probably use their A321Neos on some niche markets. According to the experts (it's their opinions not a project from ITA) after Dakar and Accra only Abidjan and probably Kinsahsa could be served both by SN and ITA. ITA will focus on leisure market in East Africa (Mombasa, Zanzibar or Kilimanjdaro) and VFR to West Africa (Lagos). For the moment about Africa, ITA is mainly focused on point to point market btw Italy and Africa with of course some connecitng with Europe and N America. Except Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana and probably DR Congo or Ivory Coast, Italy has less point to point market demand with Sub-Saharan Africa than Belgium

ITA won't have 30 A321Neos in their fleet. Only 10, when you think that some of them fly also to Europe and Midde East, their capacity in term of deployment will be limited

The 1st podcast of 2025. They talk about Brussels Airlines and its expansion into Africa. A little teasing from our experts. They are quite optimistics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K29iSfsO9c8

One expert says that with more A330s coming, SN could serve some leisures destinations in East Africa (Zanzibar, Mombasa, Seychelles) in Winter when they operate less flights to North America. One expoert is not agree about to start flights to Seychelles

United Airlines and Air Canada play a big role to feed SN flights to Africa. In Europe, France is the top market for feeding SN flights to Africa

Brussels City has good point to point demand on some SN destionations in Africa (Dakar, Kinshasa, Douala or Kigali). It helps the airline to have a good load factor.

The arrival of more A330s will help the airline to split some services and add more flights on some destinations.

For them, ITA won't be a competitor in Africa, with the A321LR they will focus on some niche markets. Many of them are not served by SN: Zanzibar, Mombasa, Kilimandjaro or Lagos. Only Abidjan is served by SN.

Welcome to the first edition of the AviaDev Insight Africa Connectivity update for 2025, hosted by Jon Howell, CEO and Founder of AviaDev Africa.

This month's guests are: Sean Mendis, Aviation Consultant.

Behramjee Ghadially, Aviation Consultant.

In this bumper episode, we cover the following stories:

Ethiopian Airlines to launch Hyderabad 3 x week from June

SAA opening a daily flight to Dar-Es-Salaam on 20th January

Air Sierra Leone launching operations with Freetown-Lagos using Embraer ERJ 145

British Airways increasing service to Nairobi in Summer 2025 and the impact on Kenya Airways and Uganda Airlines' ambitions in this market

Lufthansa Group deep dive: Brussels Airlines increasing its long haul fleet and sub-Saharan expansion to 56 weekly flights.

Discover to launch Seychelles 2 x week from October 2025

ITA joining the Lufthansa Group and what this means for African connectivity

Air Arabia launching service to Addis Ababa from Sharjah

Turkish Airlines' expansion into Tanzania

Emirates increasing frequencies to Madagascar

Latest on the South African market and ownership ruling

If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to the podcast to never miss another episode and share this episode with someone in your network who would benefit from listening.

[fcw]

I suggest you to listen the last AviaDev Africa podcast. I put the link yesterday.

They explain why ITA uses A321Neos on Africa, and why the adding of more A330s is good for Brussels Airlines.

Whilst the podcast is interesting, it’s nothing more than a podcast in which people express their personal opinions, just as we are expressing our personal opinions in this forum.

[rwandan-flyer]

The 2 experts

Sean Mendis was a Chief Operations Officer Africa World Airlines based in Ghana (you can see him on the right of the pix https://www.flyafricaworld.com/2019/10/ ... -airlines/). He has set up the partneship between Brussels Airlines African World. He has worked for others airlines based in Ghana. He has also worked in Somalia, Uganda, UAE. He works now in Malawi.

Behramjee Ghadially works currently for Camair Co as Network planner manager. But he has also worked in others countries in Africa and in the Middle East

Both are often in contact with some executive staff in various Airlines serving Africa or African Airlines. In Airliners.net, Sean Mendis has announced some new Ethiopian Airlines routes before the official statement. It's still the case with the Addis Ababa Minneapolis that could start the next summmer. Same thing with Air France in 2023 by saying that AF has plans to expand into Africa in coming years (but he didn't announce the routes for confidentiality reasons)

"* MSP is a done deal by all accounts. Announcement probably in February for summer launch. They have the spare capacity now that they have taken 3 A350s and 1 777-300ER in the last few weeks." https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtop ... #p24593333

No body is perfect and they can do mistakes but with their experiences and contacts in aviation, i think they know better aviation than many of us in this forum

[oldblueeyes]

Just a quick reality check: the 321 ITA has are flying currently to Tel Aviv, Dubai, Riyadh, Dakar, Jeddah, Accra, Cairo.
In between they are used towards filling slots at high end European destinations.

Only one widebody is flying to Africa right now, and this is rather leisure oriented - Male.

2025 is the holy year for catholics, thus they would focus on carrying in rather this groups of pax to Rome.

From 2026 onwards i may rather guess that the 321 would be used on routes ~ 5 hours length, were they could compete against Turkish for transfer pax. Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Jorda, maybe Azerbaijan and co may be the sweet spots for the 321.

A bigger Africa strategy i would suppose once is clear which airline grup would get TAP and Air Europa and once the consolidation wave is clearer which brand would do what.

With respect to the idea of SN becoming the budget TATL brand of the group, this segment is already occupied by Edelweiss and Discover, who serve niche markets with a product below the Swiss and LH standard.

[crew1990]

Only one widebody is flying to Africa right now, and this is rather leisure oriented - Male.

Male is in Asia, not Africa