Star Alliance partners Brussels Airlines and United Airlines have moved quickly to partly fill the void left following Jet Airways’ decision to close its scissor hub at Brussels Airport from spring next year. The main gateway to the Belgian capital city is a key European gateway for the airline grouping and accounts for around 52 per cent of the departure capacity.

The Indian carrier Jet Airways currently offers a mini hub operation at Brussels Airport with daily flights from Delhi and Mumbai in India connecting in the Belgian capital to daily continuation flights to Newark, USA and Toronto, Canada, but changes to its business strategy after United Arab Emirates (UAE) national carrier, Etihad Airways became an equity partner mean this demand is not being more efficiently handled via Abu Dhabi International Airport.

The airline has now decided to suspend all flights to Brussels and will instead fly daily from Delhi and Mumbai to Amsterdam, with a single continuation flight on to Toronto with effect from late March next year. Within a week of this announcement both Brussels Airlines and United Airlines have confirmed they will backfill the capacity on the two North American routes.

Belgian flag carrier, Brussels Airlines will be welcoming two additional Airbus A330s into its fleet from next year, offering extra flights to Kigali (Rwanda) and Entebbe (Uganda) in Africa and introducing a five times weekly link to Toronto from April 2016. The second aircraft will be used for further network growth and Brussels Airlines is analysing new routes to Lagos and Libreville as well as with its Star Alliance partner Air India, to introduce a route to Mumbai.

The Toronto service will be part of its Transatlantic Joint Venture partnership with United Airlines and Air Canada and the latter will support the route commercially on a codeshare basis. United will directly replace the Jet Airways Brussels – Newark flight by introducing its own second daily rotation on the route, while Brussels Airlines will also add a sixth weekly service to Washington DC.

When Jet Airways first came to Brussels Airport, the airport invested heavily so that the airline could make a large number of simultaneous arrivals and departures during the busiest period of the day. But, these investments also helped to increase the number of long-distance flights to Brussels Airport and strengthen the Star Alliance network.

During the last few years Brussels Airport’s intercontinental network has expanded significantly with the arrival of US Airways (now American Airlines), Air Canada, United Airlines (from Chicago), a doubling of the activities of Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways, Thai Airways International, Emirates Airline, and All Nippon Airways (ANA) and a doubling of the number of long-distance flights of local carrier, Brussels Airlines from four to eight.

"The strong partnership between Brussels Airport and Brussels Airlines allows us to build a solid commercial offer in Belgium to key strategic destinations for the European passenger. The further development of the Star Alliance Hub strengthens our competitive position ensuring wide connectivity for Belgium and creating employment and added value for our economy,” said Arnaud Feist, Chief Executive Officer, Brussels Airport.

The Star Alliance presence at Brussels Airport has grown from just over two million departure seats in 2005 to over seven million last year, an average annual rise of 29.5 per cent over the past ten years. This year's published schedules forecast a 5.2 per cent increase in departure capacity.