SN Brussels Airlines

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brussels Airlines
IATA
SN		 ICAO
DAT		 Callsign
ESTAIL
Founded 2002
Hubs Brussels Airport
Frequent flyer program Privilege
Member lounge Business Centre
Fleet size 38
Destinations 90
Parent company SN Airholding
Company slogan Passionate about you
Headquarters Zaventem (Brussels), Belgium
Key people Neil Burrows (CEO); Etienne Davignon, chairman
Website: http://www.flysn.com/

SN Brussels Airlines (SNBA) was a former national airline of Belgium, which mainly operated from Brussels Airport. SNBA was the trading name of the Belgian airline Delta Air Transport. SNBA was a full-service airline, connecting Brussels with the rest of Europe. It also flew to Africa, continuing Sabena's extensive network there. The airline merged with Virgin Express into Brussels Airlines which started operations on 25 March 2007 [1]

Contents

[edit] History

The airline was founded in 2002, when a group of Belgian investors (companies, financial institutions and regional investment companies, as well as the Brussels and Walloon governments), set up SN Airholding, headed by Etienne Davignon. After the 2001 bankruptcy of Sabena, Belgium's flag carrier airline, Belgium was left without a national airline. In February 2002, SN Airholding took over the Belgian airline DAT, a subsidiary of Sabena that had survived the bankruptcy, and changed its trading name to SN Brussels Airlines.

SN Brussels Airlines Avro RJ85
SN Brussels Airlines Avro RJ85

From this point, a financial and strategic reorganization started, led by the former CEO Peter Davies and his consultant-adviser Prof. Jean Frederic Mognetti. Its ambitious task was to transform the company into a cash generator. The company achieved this transformation in three years.

On 12 April, 2005 SN Brussels took holding control of Virgin Express and on 31 March, 2006 they announced their merger. On 7 November, 2006 they announced at a press conference held at Brussels Airport that the new airline would be called Brussels Airlines.

The decision of the merger was led by financial interests and actually the result of an overwhelming pressure coming from shareholder leader Etienne Davignon. As a result, the team who had transformed the company decided to quit due to a conflict of interest with Davignon.

In spite of being sold to a major which rivaled BA, Lufthansa, or Air France, Brussels Airlines stock holders wasted all the cash generated by the former team.

[edit] Destinations

Further information: SN Brussels destinations

[edit] Fleet

As of August 2006, the SN Brussels Airlines fleet consists of the following aircraft:

SN Brussels Airlines Fleet
Aircraft Total Passengers Notes
Airbus A319-100 3 132
Airbus A330-300 3 264
Avro RJ85 14 82
Avro RJ100 12 97
BAe 146-200 6 84

As of April 2006, the average age of the SN Brussels Airlines fleet was 9.8 years.

[edit] Codeshare agreements

SN Brussels Airlines has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:

[edit] Livery

The airline had various color schemes before finally settling on a uniform scheme for the fleet. The upper fuselage is white, while the belly and engines were painted lilac. An orange cheat line runs between the white and lilac parts of the fuselage. The tail shows the old Sabena "S". The website address is near the end of the fuselage. There are differences in livery between the Avro planes and the Airbus planes: most notably, the company name is written on the white part of the fuselage for the Airbus planes, but on the lilac part on the Avro.

Both this livery and the Virgin Express livery are being replaced with the Brussels Airlines livery.

[edit] Gallery

SN Brussels Airlines Avro RJ85

SN Brussels Airlines Avro RJ85 at Geneva Airport

[edit] References

  1. ^ Airliner World January 2007

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
v • d • e
Airlines of Belgium