How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Belgians* (SN Brussels Airlines)

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	SN Brussels Airlines
Date:	19/09/06 (756 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Full service airline, frequent flights, prices not much more than the budget carriers

Disadvantages: They only go to Brussels!

* with apologies to Dr Strangelove


Me and SABENA
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I like to think I'm generally a pretty nice person who wouldn't relish the failure of others. However, I will confess to having rubbed my hands in malicious glee back in Novemober 2001 when the Belgian national airline SABENA unceremoniously went 'belly up'.

I had suffered at the hands of an over-zealous cost-cutting travel secretary some years before. She had clearly decided that whilst time might be money, if it was MY time versus the company's money, that was fine. I suffered a succession of nasty flights with SABENA from Manchester to just about anywhere else with pathetic connections in Brussels. I grew to hate SABENA with deeply venomous feelings.

Rumour had it that SABENA stood for 'Such A Bad Experience, Never Again' and I tended to agree. There are lots of these great acronyms, my favourite being 'Always Late In Take-off, Always Late in Arrival' (Alitalia) and the rather implausible 'Let Us Fondle The Hostesses And Never Say Anything' (Lufthansa). But I digress!

I briefly felt a bit bad for my animosity towards the company when I watched Hotel Rwanda – a film in which SABENA were shown to have played an important role in helping to protect the people hiding out in one of their hotels. Of course it helped that the president of SABENA was played by Jean Reno.

And so it was with some misgivings that I flew this week with the reincarnated SABENA - now known by the name SN Brussels Airlines - from Birmingham to Brussels. Would they be better? Would my standards have changed? Would I ever give them a second chance? Read on to find out more

How the mighty are fallen – some airline history
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In the second half of 2001 the airline industry worldwide hit its greatest crisis. Following the terrorist attacks on September 11th, anyone who could avoid flying, did just that. Transatlantic traffic in particular melted away almost overnight. Airlines cut back on routes and frequencies, passengers postponed or cancelled trips and many of those airlines whose finances were already shaky hit the wall. Ironically SABENA's downfall was precipitated by the demise of another national carrier, Swiss Air. Swiss Air had long been one of the most ridiculously over-extravagant airlines (the only one to have both first and business class on short-haul flights to appeal to the super-wealthy bankers) so nobody was too surprised that it went into liquidation just a few weeks after 9/11. Swiss owed LOTS of money to SABENA and refused to pay their outstanding debts. They appealed to government and industry alike to try and get the financial support they needed to keep flying but to no avail. In November 2001, one of Europe's longest running airlines went into liquidation leaving poor little Belgium without a national carrier.

I popped a cork or two, happy in the knowledge that I would never have to fly SABENA again – and confident that the workers would be sure to get some fantastic pay off under Euro employment legislation.

Back to Life
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SN Brussels Airlines was founded in 2002 when Belgian investors set up SN Airholding. It’s now owned by Delta Air Transport – previously a subsidiary of SABENA which was spun off post-bankruptcy. The same company now owns Virgin Express.

Back to Haunt Me
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I thought nothing more of SABENA until about a month ago when I saw the SN Brussels planes at Birmingham airport, recognised the old SABENA logo and put two and two together. Next day I got a call inviting me to go for a job interview in Brussels – fate was conspiring to put me on the Lazarus-like Belgian carrier. Living in the Midlands I have a choice of Birmingham, East Midlands or Luton all within an hour’s drive but given a choice, I’ll take Birmingham.

For getting to Brussels, I really didn’t have much of a choice. None of the budget airlines flies to Brussels (I think Ryanair has flights from Stansted to a field somewhere in Belgium that they call Brussels but that’s about as close as you can get). BMI has some exorbitant flights out of East Midlands at £500 or more. I went looking for Virgin Express who used to be hubbed in Brussels – only to find that they are now part of SN. I tried BA but they code share with SN. In short, I explored every possible way of not flying with SN but I failed to find anything practical or reasonably prices. And so for around the £120 mark I got a ticket with SN. (Sorry to be a bit vague about the prices but the ticket was booked for me by the company I went to visit and I don’t have the full costing info).

Where are they based? Where do they go?
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Brussels is the hub airport for SN. So if you are looking for a direct flight, you can only go to Brussels. However once you get that far, the world opens up to you and they can offer an unusual range of destinations in Europe, Africa, North America, the Middle East and Far East. Some of these destinations are handled through their own fleet and others through a range of rather bizarre code-shares. Take a look at the website www.flysn.co.uk for a full list of destinations. The only thing I noticed that’s really quite unusual is their coverage of some of the ‘less attractive’ destinations in West and Central Africa such as Rwanda and Liberia. I guess these are the areas historically under Belgian influence but they aren’t big tourist traps.

Within the UK, they fly from Birmingham (five flights per day), Bristol (3), London (Gatwick, 2 and Heathrow, 8), Manchester (6) and Newcastle (2). The website advertises fares from little more than you might pay with the budget airlines – so they are worth considering.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty – how was it?
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SN fly out of Birmingham terminal 2 – it’s not an airport I’ve used that often but my impression is that charter flights use T1 and the scheduled use T2. I’m sure that if a reader knows better, they’ll leave me a comment and I’ll change that if I’m wrong. The last time I was at Birmingham was in mid August – on the day that the latest big security scare kicked off. The place was crazy with irate passengers and people stuffing their minimal belongings into plastic bags. This week was a different story with an almost empty airport.

** Check-In
Because SN code-share the route to Brussels with BA, you can check in at any of the BA desks including the hand-luggage only desk. I had only my handbag (with my currently-banned lipstick hidden in my pencil case like the international smuggler that I am) so I used the hand-luggage desk which had no queue at all. The main queue was also very short.

As a BA silver card holder (I was so close to gold before I got made redundant, I could almost smell it, touch it, arghhhhhhh) I blagged an invite for the BA lounge. I suspect I wasn’t really supposed to get it (and they refused me on the way back) but on this occasion I got away with it. The guy checking me in also issued my boarding card for the return flight the same afternoon so I knew I wouldn’t have to rush to the airport or stand in line for my pass.

** Security (not that SN have anything to do with that)
There were no queues for the security strip (oops, should be security check but these days the place is full of people taking off their coats, shoes, belts etc). I was through and into the lounge to surf the net and check out how my dooyoo reviews were dooyooing and to read my email, have a few cups of coffee and some biscuits.

On to the plane
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With everyone holding an assigned seat, there was none of the budget airline scrum that we’ve all become used to. The plane was fully boarded a full ten minutes before the scheduled departure. We were offered free newspapers and settled into our big blue leather seats. The seat configuration is five across – two on one side, three on the other. Lots of bottom room and lots of leg room. The staff wear smart ‘proper airline’ uniforms and look like proper flight attendants instead of children’s entertainers (easyJet users will know what I mean!). In addition to the newspapers handed out on boarding, we received the inflight newspaper – updated every two weeks.

After take off passengers were offered free drinks and free snack-boxes containing a big slab of juicy apple pie. Before landing we were offered Belgian chocolate. As you can imagine, by this point I was fully converted.

Take off was spot on time, arrival was slightly early. I can’t really give the airline full credit for that as such things are largely in the hands of Air Traffic Control.

The Return
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The plane was fully boarded and raring to go. ATC put a block of almost an hour on our take off time – this is sadly very typical of Brussels airport so whilst I was disappointed, I wasn’t surprised and I slept through the delay. Same good service as before – bar service, snack box with a small role and a pasta salad, newspapers etc. I think I slept through the chocolate offer this time but I don’t doubt it happened.

So did they change my mind?
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SN Brussels Airlines gets a qualified thumbs-up from me. They’ve shown me they are ideal for a trip to Brussels and I’d clearly use them again for that trip. But I’d really need to look carefully at their connection times before I’d consider using them for a connecting flight to somewhere else. If I ever find myself in need of a flight to Rwanda, I’ll know who to turn to!

Summary: SABENA is dead! Long live SN Brussels!