All direct flights to Brussels Charleroi from the UK & Ireland

James Says

The relatively high prices of flights might be of little concern to Eurocrats who never have to worry about the cost of travel, but Brussels is the scene of one of the great European aviation legal battles. Ryanair used to operate up to eight flights each day between London Stansted and Brussels Charleroi, but in the face of a challenge from the European Commission over the marketing subsidies which they received from the regional government in Charleroi to set up a base there, the airline slowly pulled back on its route network at Charleroi, before stopping its flights there from London and Liverpool altogether in 2004. Ryanair's argument has always been that any subsidies it receives are minimal when compared to the huge bailouts which ailing state airlines such as Alitalia, Olympic Airways (Greece), and Belgium's own Sabena (now SN Brussels) had received. Ryanair do still operate flights into Brussels Charleroi from Dublin and Glasgow, but do not seem to have any intention of reinstating the Stansted to Brussels route. As is so often the case with Ryanair, they might often use the politics as a smokescreen, when the reality is simply that in order to be competitive on this route they had to offer a high frequency of service, which in turn meant that due to increased levels of supply, the route generated a very low yield (average fare per passenger). Even for those Brussels bound passengers who had to pay for their own ticket, the extra hassle of travelling out to Stansted, and then taking a convoluted bus route from Charleroi into Brussels, was not worth it, especially with the new higher speed Eurostar timetables.