Brussels Airlines prepares for summer with the reopening of attractive holiday destinations

As the demand for holiday travel is expected to rise towards the summer months, Brussels Airlines wants to offer its customers attractive holiday destinations, together with its partners and tour operators. With a wide offer of holiday flights, the airline wants to provide its customers a positive outlook for the coming summer.

Next to 18 intercontinental destinations in Africa and North America, Brussels Airlines plans to operate 60 short and medium haul routes with a focus on holiday hotspots such as Greece, Portugal and Spain.

Today, Brussels Airlines operates flights to nearly all of its African destinations, while offering only a small capacity on Europe, limited to feeder flights for the African network. As of April, Brussels Airlines will progressively reopen its European network, with a focus on holiday travel. The first routes to re-join the network will be Alicante, Athens, Barcelona, Bilbao, Bologna, Budapest, Catania, Faro, Gran Canaria, Heraklion, Kos, Krakow, Lisbon, Madrid, Malaga, Napoli, Nice, Oslo, Porto, Prague, Rome, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, Tenerife, Valencia, Vilnius and Warsaw.

As of May also Dubrovnik, Edinburgh, Ibiza, Milan Linate, Moscow, Palermo, Palma de Mallorca, Rhodes, Split and Vienna will be added. From June onwards, Brussels Airlines will add more flight frequencies to these destinations as well as open new ones, including Bari, Birmingham, Corfu, Florence, Goteborg, Saint Petersburg, Yerevan, and Zakynthos on the medium haul network.

Africa and North Atlantic

Washington DC and New York are planned to be operated as of June 14, Montreal joins the network on June 15. These will be the first North-Atlantic flights of Brussels Airlines since March 21^st, 2020.

As for the African network, Brussels Airlines gradually increases its flight frequencies to all its African destinations towards a peak as of mid June, when West African destinations Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Accra (Ghana), Banjul (Gambia) and Dakar (Senegal) are planned to be offered on a daily basis. In Central and East Africa Douala and Yaounde (both in Cameroon), Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Entebbe (Uganda) are also planned to be served daily. Luanda joins the network again after more than a year. As of June 15, the Angolan city will be served three times weekly. Compared to today, weekly frequencies on the long haul network will triple.

New route: Brussels – Frankfurt

In addition to the reopening of a large part of its network, Brussels Airlines is also thrilled to add a new destination to its portfolio: Frankfurt. Lufthansa currently serves the connection between Brussels Airport and Frankfurt. As of August, Brussels Airlines will take over 2 flights per day. The connection to the Lufthansa hub in Frankfurt offers great transfer possibilities to the entire Lufthansa network, while passengers departing in Frankfurt enjoy access to the African network the Belgian airline is known for.

The first Brussels Airlines flight to Frankfurt will take off on August 2.

The entire overview of the Brussels Airlines network is available on brusselsairlines.com/en-be/destinations

Flexibility for customers

Further development of the network offer is still highly dependent on the progress of the pandemic and the according travel restrictions. The network can still evolve with new destinations should opportunities in the market arise. To enable flexible travel planning for all its customers, Brussels Airlines continues to offer extensive rebooking options.

All Brussels Airlines fares can be rebooked without a booking fee and as often as desired until the end of May 2021. After that date, one more rebooking can be done free of charge. However, additional costs may arise for rebookings if, for example, the original booking class is no longer available when rebooking to a different date or to a different destination.

CO2-neutral flights with Compensaid

Recently the Belgian airline launched a new booking platform, offering its customers a broader flight offer aligned with the Lufthansa Group, as well as more options to rebook flights online and the possibility to make flights carbon neutral with Compensaid. It is the first time that Brussels Airlines customers have the option to avoid CO2-emissions by sponsoring Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), the first viable alternative for fossil fuels. The aim of SAF is to reuse carbon from existing sustainable biomass or gases and recycle it back into jet fuel so that it replaces fossil jet fuel refined from petroleum crude oil. The process is a first step towards closing the CO2 cycle.

On brusselsairlines.com, passengers can find information on traveling in times of corona, mask-carrying requirements, country-specific travel regulations or flexible rebooking arrangements.