I'm not going to get involved in the political discussion that is going on here, i'd just want to add a comment to this suggestion:
Passenger wrote: ↑18 Feb 2018, 12:03
There is a much cheaper solution: Alexander De Croo (junior) invites the Ambassador of Congo (and partner) to a dinner in the Comme Chez Soi. Alexander De Croo then tells the Ambassador that he apologizes for his statement that Belgium demands more results from its cooperation aid. De Croo explains that he only wanted to say that improvement is possible with new technology like solar power and robotics. And De Croo asks that the Ambassador transmits his apologies to Kabila. The next day, the traffic rights are reinstalled.
Although the diplomatic process probably would take a bit more time than suggested here, it might be interesting to consider for a second that the Belgian government's reluctance to even start mending the problem for B.air might be on purpose?!
Think about the coincidential convenience of the events:
1- A couple of weeks ago, a German shareholder unilaterally decided to take full operational control of their equity investment in Belgium because they were not satisfied with the pace nor style at which the Belgian management were doing things, notably also in Africa were they were reportedly said by the Lufthansa CEO to be too much 'biking and socializing' and not focusing enough on the immediate return, thus enforcing more of a teutonic attitude at the top of the company.
2- And then suddenly a diplomatic issue came along with significant impact on one of the key routes to Africa, which is obviously one of the reasons why Lufthansa wants Brussels airlines in the first place.
It's very clear this issue can only be (started to be) solved with a lot of diplomatic goodwill and 'massaging' from the Belgian government, but let it be such that our government have felt the need to explicitly explain to the Lufthansa CEO via both a face-to-face meeting AND diplomatic contacts through the German Chancellery that he'll better think twice before simply folding Brussels Airlines into some recently set up spin-off of his, as if it is just a regional venture in his big plan...
3- We don't know if this meeting was very convincing in itself (even though a lot of effort was put in appeasing everybody and reassuring such was definitely not the plan), but I can't but notice that the current issues in RDC are a very convenient and almost immediate illustration of the important commercial problems ahead for Lufthansa and their investment in Brussels Airlines when they'd no longer be able to unambiguously rely on the continued diplomatic support of the Belgian government throughout Africa if and when they simply make Brussels Airlines a Eurowings branche as if it were to be a German company operating from BRU.
In all, although I don't have proof of it, I don't think it's too far fetched our government is currently letting Mr. Spohr and his handpicked German-lead management team in BRU feel the full heath of the African kitchen for a while on this, for I am pretty sure Germans with a strict rule enforcing background are quite easily underestimating the importance of human flexibility and personal interaction (also between nations) on operations in African countries which are a fair bit less rules based and of which they have a very limited understanding, unless they are made to experience it themselves.