BRUSSELS AIRLINES AND ITS SOCIAL PARTNERS CONTINUE TO WORK ON THE FUTURE

Brussels Airlines management and social partners met frequently during the course of the summer to discuss the issues that our crew members were facing and to find a better way to distribute the burden among all operational staff. All sides concurred that given the current difficult and competitive environment, a healthy work-life balance should be a priority. The rostering procedure has already undergone a number of modifications. Other measures will be adopted later since they need more time. We continue to search for ideas that will lessen the workload and/or improve the quality, and we will hold additional meetings with the crew scheduling department, the cockpit crew, and the cabin crew. Our staff of the crew is very humble to our respected passengers who have made their

brussels airlines bookings

via any booking method. No matters that passenger have made his booking via travel agency, online sites or from our direct call centers.


After many meetings with union leaders, the management of Brussels Airlines will make a proposal to enhance the compensation package for the cockpit crew today, Friday, October 14. We appreciate the concerns this non-indexation of the flexible compensation package for pilots creates in this community in light of the current extreme inflation and general economic downturn. We aim to come up with a solution that further solves this issue in addition to the cafeteria plan, which enables a significant optimization of the pilots’ compensation package, while closely monitoring our precarious cost position.


We are pleased that the productive collaboration with the social partners that began at the beginning of the summer is moving along at a good clip, and we thank our social partners for their dedication and constructive input in ensuring that our business and our employees have opportunities to develop.

On July 4, Brussels Airlines’ management and social partners examined the current state of the economy and the market as well as the company’s potential future directions. It became evident that effective collaboration between management and social partners is essential to setting up the proper framework for the company’s future success.


Therefore, throughout the summer, both parties got together for a number of workshops to discuss workload-related issues. All of these workshops were held in a supportive environment, establishing a new benchmark for communication between Brussels Airlines management and its unions.


Today, August 23, a day-long status meeting is being held to discuss the current state of the market and potential future developments, to review the work completed over the summer, and to define the next steps while making sure to maintain the positive cooperation that was established in the workshops. While some measures to reduce workload and/or improve quality have already been put in place, others are still being looked into by both parties and will be finished in the upcoming months.


In light of the competitive environment and Brussels Airlines’ future, we saw an exceptional potential to advance. We achieved a very strong and competitive cost position as a result of our Reboot Plus restructuring initiative, which produced positive results. We can take the next logical step, which is to enhance our market position by expanding our fleet and staff, with the help of this cost position—which we must carefully guard—and the positive collaboration with our social partners. We are actively looking into several growth options, which will be released in further detail soon. Our current personnel will have career prospects thanks to this increase.


Winter will still be uncertain since Covid’s future development and impact on market demand are unknown, corporate demand is still erratic, and operational constraints at airports and with system partners will continue to strain our operational stability. We are increasing our operational staff across all departments in preparation for this difficult winter season.


In order to ensure that resource needs are properly met, the decision has been made to engage extra external cabin staff, extend the contracts of 200 temporary cabin crew members, and strengthen our resource planning. We’ve posted job openings for pilots on the cockpit side, but we’ve also started hiring more people for ground operations, maintenance, and engineering.


With a more equitable workload distribution, this should improve operational stability during the winter season.


We would like to express our gratitude to our social partners for their dedication and positive support in ensuring that our business and our employees have opportunities to develop.