Takeover of Air Belgium to leave 130 cabin crew redunant

Air Belgium will not be retaining some 130 members of its cabin crew as it transfers its operations to a new company, Air One Belgium, the troubled airline has announced.

These people, who have been out of work since October, will lose their jobs when Air Belgium’s operating licence is transferred to the new entity, expected to be launched in late March or April.

In December, the Nivelles company court gave the green light to the conditions for the takeover of the carrier for cargo activities only - and not, to the disappointment of Air Belgium, passenger flights - by a consortium made up of the Dutch company PESO Aviation Management and British firm Air One Holding International. The latter claims to manage the fifth largest fleet of wide body cargo aircraft in the world.

The new structure, called Air One Belgium, will operate from Brussels Airport and stay headquartered in Mont-Saint-Guibert near Nivelles, in Walloon Brabant. Starting with an existing fleet of four cargo planes, it plans to add two more large aircraft this year.

It will retain only 197 of the company’s current 401 employees, including pilots.

The 200 other employees - cabin crew, including around 60 freelance or temporary staff - who have not been taken on are currently unemployed. As the new entity will not operate any passenger flights, the cabin crew roles will be made redundant when Air One Belgium is set up.

This is a big disappointment for Air Belgium, which had hoped to be able to retain some employees, by operating passenger flights on behalf of other airlines under a leasing system commonly used in the aviation industry called ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance).

“This decision weighs heavily on us. It means that not only must we abandon all efforts to return to the market via Air Belgium, but also that the cessation of such operations via Air One Belgium is now a foregone conclusion,” said Air Belgium chief executive Niky Terzakis in an internal note.

In December, Terzakis said the move was not the end of the company but “an evolution”, adding that he was “flattered” that the new ownership had asked him to stay on.

The Air Belgium story started to go wrong in September 2023, when the company announced the end of its own passenger flights to South Africa and Mauritius, as they were “chronically unprofitable”.