Brussels South Charleroi Airport

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Brussels South Charleroi Airport
Charleroi/Brussels South
Charleroi Airport

IATA: CRL – ICAO: EBCI
Summary
Airport type public
Owner Government of Walloon Region
Operator SOWAER (Société Wallonne des Aéroports)
Serves Brussels
Location Charleroi
Elevation AMSL 614 ft / 187 m
Coordinates 50°27′36″N 004°27′10″E / 50.46, 4.45278
Website www.charleroi-airport.com
Runways
Direction Length Surface
m ft
07/25 2,550 8,366 Asphalt
Statistics (2007)
Passengers 2,458,255
Source: Belgian AIP at EUROCONTROL
Not to be confused with Brussels-South Railway Station.

Brussels South Charleroi Airport (BSCA), also called Charleroi Airport, (IATA: CRL, ICAO: EBCI) is located 4 nautical miles (7 kilometres) north of Charleroi, 46km (28.75 miles) from central Brussels, in Wallonia (Belgium). 2,458,255 passengers used the airport in 2007 (2,166,360 in 2006).

A new terminal has opened in January 2008. It has a capacity of up to 5 million passengers a year.

Contents

[edit] How to get there

[edit] By bus

Local TEC buses run to Charleroi station.

A coach runs to Brussels-South railway station every 45 minutes, 20 times a day, taking one hour. (Note that the Brussels-South train station is in Brussels unlike Brussels-South airport which is in Charleroi.) The ticket office is just outside arrivals and the coach picks up just outside the building.

There are also buses to Lille and Bruges.

[edit] By train

A special bus (Airport Express - A) will take you to Charleroi-South train station. A combined ticket bus + train to any belgian train station can be bought in the terminal.

[edit] By car

If you have a GPS, the address of the new terminal is : Rue d'Heppignies - 6043 RANSART. The airport is easily accessible by the highway from Brussels, Liège or Lille.

[edit] History

The first aeronautical activities in Gosselies date back to 1919 (flying school, then aeronautical maintenance activities the following year). The British aircraft manufacturer Fairey Aviation settled a subsidiary Avions Fairey on the site (then known as Mont des Bergers) in 1931.

Gosselies airfield became a public aerodrome after World War II, but the main activities of the site remained aeronautical constructions (installation of SABCA in 1954, then SONACA in 1978, taking the place of Fairey).

In the seventies, the Belgian national airline Sabena launched a Liège-Charleroi-London service, but this was soon dropped because of poor results. Gosselies was left with almost no passengers traffic (the airport being mainly used for private or pleasure flights, training flights and occasional charters to leisure destinations around the Mediterranean Sea or to Algeria.

Charleroi Airport finally took off in the nineties, with a new commercial management structure (BSCA - Brussels South Charleroi Airport) and the arrival of Irish low cost airline Ryanair in 1997, which opened it first continental base at Charleroi a few years later.

Although criticised for the subsidies paid by the Walloon government to help its installation, Ryanair opened new routes from Charleroi (they also closed two destinations : London-Stansted and Liverpool, although Stansted was re-introduced in June 2007). Other low-cost carriers later joined Ryanair in Charleroi, such as Wizz Air and Air Service Plus (later replaced by On Air). The Polish airline Air Polonia operated services from Charleroi to Warsaw and Katowice before being declared bankrupt in August 2004.

In September 2006 it was announced that Moroccan low-cost airline Jet4you would launch three weekly flights to Casablanca (on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday) starting 1 November 2006, in code share cooperation with Belgian airline Jetairfly.

[edit] Ryanair assistance

The European Commission objected to assistance the airport offered to Ryanair, since the airport is owned by the Wallonia regional government and thus the discounts and other benefits could be considered state aid.

[edit] Airlines and Destinations

  • Jet4you (Casablanca)
  • Jetairfly (Gran Canaria [Begins 25 October 2008], Nador [Begins 23 October 2008], Oujda [Begins 24 October 2008], Tenerife-South [Begins 25 October 2008])
  • On Air (Pescara)
  • Ryanair (Alicante, Bergerac, Bologna-Forlì, Carcassonne, Dublin, Faro, Fez [begins June 2008], Gdansk [begins June 2008], Girona, Glasgow-Prestwick, Grenoble, Krakow [begins June 2008], Limoges, Madrid, Malaga, Manchester [begins June 2008], Marrakech [begins June 2008], Marseille, Milan-Orio al Serio, Montpellier [begins June 2008], Nîmes, Palma Mallorca [begins June 2008], Pau, Perpignan, Pisa, Porto, Poznan [begins June 2008], Rome-Ciampino, Santander [begins June 2008], Shannon, Tanger [begins June 2008], Turin, Valencia, Valladolid, Venice-Treviso, Zaragoza)
  • Wizz Air (Bucharest-Băneasa, Budapest, Katowice, Sofia [begins 24 July], Warsaw)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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Belgian airports