Brussels South Charleroi Airport, also unofficially called Brussels-Charleroi Airport, Charleroi Airport or rarely Gosselies Airport, is an international airport, located in Gosselies, a part of the city of Charleroi in the Province of Hainaut in Wallonia, Belgium. The airport is north of Charleroi and south of central Brussels. In terms of passengers and aircraft movements, it is the second busiest airport in Belgium having served 7,303,720 passengers in 2016. It is also a busy general aviation airfield, being home to 3 flying schools. The Aéropole, one of the Science Parks of Wallonia, is located near the airport.
History
Early years
The first aeronautical activities in Gosselies date back to 1919 as a flying school, then aeronautical maintenance activities the following year. The British aircraft manufacturerFairey Aviation settled a subsidiary Avions Fairey on the site in 1931. During World War II, the site was arranged as an Advanced Landing Ground for the allied air forces, from 14 September 1944 until 10 August 1945. Gosselies airfield became a public aerodrome after World War II, but the main activities of the site remained aeronautical constructions. In the 1970s, the Belgian national airlineSabena launched a Liège–Charleroi–London service, but this was soon dropped because of poor results. Gosselies was left with almost no passenger traffic, the airport being mainly used for private or pleasure flights, training flights and occasional charters to leisure destinations around the Mediterranean Sea or to Algeria.
Operations at Brussels South Charleroi grew in the 1990s, with a new commercial management structure and the arrival of Irish low-cost airline Ryanair in 1997, which opened its first continental base at Charleroi a few years later. Although criticised for the subsidies paid by the Walloon government to help its installation, Ryanair opened new routes from Brussels South Charleroi. Other low-cost carriers later joined Ryanair in Brussels South Charleroi, such as Wizz Air. The Polish airline Air Polonia operated services from here to Warsaw and Katowice before going bankrupt in August 2004. In September 2006 it was announced that Moroccan low-cost airline Jet4you would launch three weekly flights to Casablanca starting 1 November 2006, in code-share cooperation with Belgian airline Jetairfly. A new terminal opened in January 2008. It has a capacity of up to 5 million passengers a year, which means that it has reached its maximum capacity in 2010. The European Commission objected to assistance the airport offered to Ryanair, since the airport is owned by the Wallonia regional government and thus the discounts and other benefits could be considered state aid. However, the Court of First Instance decided on 17 December 2008 that the Commission's decision finding that illegal aid had been granted to Ryanair should be annulled and quashed as being erroneous in law. However, in March 2012, the Commission reopened the case in order to take this judgment into account. In January 2017, a second terminal was opened in order to relieve the T1 during rush hours and to be able to accommodate 10 million passengers a year in the future.
Airlines and destinations
The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights at Brussels South Charleroi Airport:
On 9 February 2013, a small Cessna plane crashed near the runway after suffering technical problems during take-off, killing all 5 people on board. The airport was closed for about six hours before resuming services.
