Brussels Airlines avoids competitive airports

According industry analysts, part of the success behind Brussels Airlines–the carrier which replaced SN Brussels and its long defunct legacy predecessor, Sabena–is that it has so far managed to avoid some of the most competitive airports and has instead focused on secondary hubs in some of Europe’s major cities. A good example is Berlin, where Brussels Airlines is one of the only carriers to serve the German capital’s historic Tempelhof Airport, which is slated to close down in three months. While nearly all commercial airlines have already pulled out, Brussels Airlines is the only one to still offer regular service between Berlin and Brussels. The airport, located a stone’s throne away from Berlin’s city centre, is especially convenient for businesspeople who are short on time and wish to avoid the lengthy commute from either Tegel or Schoenefeld, the city’s two main hubs. As such, for the past several years, Brussels Airlines has enjoyed a monopoly on the Berlin-Tempelhof to Brussels route.

Brussels Airlines has also avoided fierce competition at some of Europe’s busiest hubs, by simply not operating from cities and airports that are already saturated by a range of other carriers. For example, Belgium’s primary carrier does not fly to Amsterdam or to Paris and it only offers bare minimum service to London and Frankfurt, since all of these are served by airlines that are much larger and more powerful than Brussels, including Air France-KLM, Lufthansa and British Airways. Yet Brussels Airlines’ very modest presence in these cities is balanced by its focus on popular medium to large-sized airports in both Spain and Italy, where it has thus far very successfully competed with low-cost carriers. The Belgian airline’s strategy seems to be paying off, as its profits in 2007 rose to €23.1 million.

www.brusselsairlines.com