#BRUSSELSAIRLINES’ USE OF #AVRO RJ AIRCRAFT COMES TO AN END
(Posted 05th October 2017)
On October 28th will Brussels Airlines turn an important page in its history book when flight SN2720 from Geneva to Brussels will perform the airline’s very last scheduled flight with an AVRO jet.
Produced by the British manufacturer British Aerospace, the AVRO has played an important role in the growth of Brussels Airlines in the past. When the airline was founded fifteen years ago its fleet consisted exclusively of 32 AVRO type aircraft (12 AVRO RJ100, 14 RJ85 and 6 Bae146) that were acquired from Sabena subsidiary DAT. Since then have 31.5 million passengers flown on board a Brussels Airlines AVRO jet across Europe.
More than 500 Belgian pilots and a thousand cabin crew members started their career on board the four-engine plane. Several hundred Brussels Airlines aircraft engineers were over the years responsible for the planes’ maintenance.
In October 2008 the last AVRO/Bae146 left the fleet while in 2014 the company said goodbye to its last AVRO RJ85. At the end of October it’s the last AVRO family member that leaves the company. An AVRO RJ100 with registration OO-DWD will complete the phase out of this aircraft type and the very last scheduled flight brings passengers to Geneva in the morning and returns to Brussels Airport in the evening. It is worth to know that the very first Brussels Airlines flight in 2002 also took off in direction of Geneva.
Until the end of October will this particular aircraft be operated on a daily basis in Brussels Airlines’ flight schedule. Those who still want to fly on board the plane can do so for just a few more weeks. On Saturdays for example, a day trip to Geneva is possible with OO-DWD on flights SN2713 BRU-GVA in the morning and back on SN2720 in the evening. On weekdays the aircraft is regularly used for scheduled flights to Warsaw, Basel and Copenhagen.
As part of the fleet restructuring has Brussels Airlines, since the phase out of the AVRO planes began, introduced more Airbus A320 aircraft to the fleet and will start in late 2018 to also exchange their older Airbus A330 long haul fleet against new models of the same make.
In East Africa does the airline serve Entebbe, Kigali and Bujumbura and will from December 2017 increase flights to daily services from Brussels via Kigali – and one flight via Bujumbura – to Uganda. This is the first time Brussels Airlines will serve Entebbe with daily flights, something not even predecessor airline SABENA accomplished in the past. Brussels Airlines serves 90 European, 25 African and 3 North American destinations in addition to which the Belgian national airline also flies to Mumbai and Tel Aviv, making it 120 destinations worldwide.
This is accomplished with a fleet of 51 aircraft, soon to be exclusively by Airbus.
Related articles:
https://atcnews.org/2017/09/21/brussels-airlines-offers-an-additional-26-destinations/
https://atcnews.org/2017/09/18/breakingnews-as-brussels-airlines-announces-daily-flights-to-entebbe-come-december/
