Brussels Airlines follows Austrian with suspension of all commercial ops until mid Apr-2020

Brussels Airlines announced (17-Mar-2020) plans to temporarily suspend all commercial operations from 21-Mar-2020 to 19-Apr-2020 as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. The carrier will gradually reduce its schedule from 17-Mar-2020 to 21-Mar-2020 at which point the suspension will commence. Brussels Airlines will continue to keep a minimal capacity on standby base for repatriation operations if required. As of 16-Mar-2020, Brussels Airlines employees are working in a 30% temporary technical unemployment regime and the carrier is working on the expansion of the partial temporary technical unemployment to 100% for the period of the suspension. Some exceptions to the full temporary unemployment scheme will be made to cover repatriation operations and the restart of operations after 19-Apr-2020. As previously reported by CAPA, Lufthansa Group subsidiary Austrian Airlines also temporarily ceased all commercial operations from 19-Mar-2020 until 28-Mar-2020 initially due to the virus and subsequent impacts on global demand. [more - original PR]