A difficult task ahead for Air Belgium, the Belgian scheduled, charter and cargo airline headquartered in Mont-Saint-Guibert and based at Brussels Airport. The airline is looking for a refinancing of at least €10 million by the end of this year to avoid bankruptcy, according to the Belgian news television channel and website Les News 24 (LN24).
Actually, 500 people are working for Air Belgium of which 167 pilots. At the end of 2022, the airline is expected to have accumulated a heavy loss: the LN24 journalist Martin Buxant speaks of €40 million.
The question remains whether the main shareholders (49% Hongyuan Group, 35% shares owned by the Walloon government, 10% by the Belgian government and other private investors) will come up with additional funding.
According to the LN24 journalist, the €16 million that were injected eight months ago, have already been “burned“. And Dominique Simonet, a journalist with newspaper La Libre Belgique, believes that the airline will not survive without public funds. However, he reminded that Air Belgium made a profit of more than €6 million in 2019, the last full year before the Covid pandemic.
End of September, Air Belgium proudly launched flights between Brussels Airport and South Africa. More recently, the airline carried the Royal couple on a state visit to Lithuania.
