Brussels Airlines Focuses on West Africa

Ghana is Brussels Airlines’ 16th West African destination
While saluting the first passengers from Accra arriving at Brussels Airport the Airline’ CEO Bernard Gustin stressed in his welcoming speech that business and leisure travel to Ghana is increasing. “This is why Accra definitely deserves a place in the growing network of Brussels Airlines,” emphasized Gustin. “With the opening of this new route we also support the trade relations and create air freight capacity between Belgium and Ghana.”
Accra is the 16th destination of Brussels Airlines in West-Africa.

Creating markets
Touching the doubling of flights from previously two to four per week on the Brussels-Lomé course spokesperson Wencke spoke of “good news” for her airline. “Over the past years, we have been able to create a market and further build our brand in Togo.” She went on to say: “With two flights a week we had reached the limits of our capacity and therefore were one of the driving forces in the decision to add frequencies to Lomé. Doubling our capacity allows us to provide our customers with even more flexibility – especially for the export of perishables during the week as penetrating European fresh markets is crucial.”
Southbound, the additional frequencies are a welcomed asset to Brussels Airline Cargo’s express services as it will improve the transit time for urgent spare parts that are needed for the repair works on boats lying in the harbor of Lomé.

Concentrating on West Africa
Both Accra and Lomé stand for Brussels Airlines’ shift of focus from East Africa, where Nairobi was taken off the route map, to destinations in the western parts of the continent. This is done in accord with the carrier’s largest shareholder Lufthansa (45 percent) that has started passenger flights to Nairobi again as of this winter schedule complementing the cargo flights to and from the Kenyan capital.
Supposedly, Accra will not be the last West African destination in Brussels Airlines’ network. Internal sources indicate that more is to come but the plans are not in a decision-making stage yet.    

Heiner Siegmund