BRUSSELS AIRLINES WELCOMED 13.4% MORE PASSENGERS IN MARCH

[Hannah Clarke]

In March, 778,175 people got on a Brussels Airlines flight, which is 13.4% more than in the same month of the previous year. Seat load factor went up by 4.7 percentage points because there were more people using the network as a whole. Most of the people have booked their flights in advance by Brussels airlines customer service because they know that the coming days are going to be very busy.

March was a good month for Brussels Airlines. In the last month, Brussels Airlines flew 6,390 times and had 778,175 passengers on board, which is 91,876 more than in March 2017. The North American (+28.1%) and African (+18.1%) networks saw the most growth, followed by the European (+10.8%) and Middle Eastern (+5.6%) networks. The growth in Asia is because Brussels Airlines' route to Mumbai started on March 30, 2017. (comparison of 2 days of operations last year versus an entire month this year). On the European network, most of the growth was due to the activities of Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium, which were brought together last October.

Because of the increase in passengers, the average seat load factor went up by 4.7 percentage points, to 79.5%. Brussels Airlines Cargo also had a very good month. Cargo load factor went up by 5.8 points to 75.2%. The amount of freight that Brussels Airlines carried in the back of its passenger planes went up by 43%. This is a big increase that is partly due to the opening of the route to Mumbai.

Compared to March of last year, 3.9% less flights were made by Brussels Airlines. Still, the airline was able to speed up its rate of growth. This is because the last AVRO jets (with 100 seats) were replaced by Airbus planes with more seats (180 seats). Because it had more to offer, Brussels Airlines was able to keep its prices low and bring in even more customers. This, however, means that there is still a lot of pressure on airline ticket prices to go up.

These numbers don't include the people who fly on charter flights that Brussels Airlines runs for tour companies.