Mr Bernard Gustin | CEO, Brussels Airlines

And I would like to tell you a little bit more about Brussels Airlines, about our flight between Brussels and Mumbai. The title is clear: reconnecting India to Belgium, because it's true that there has been a tradition of linking India, Mumbai, to Belgium, Brussels. And we had a little gap for the past month, and it was time to put an end to this gap. And that's why I'm very, very proud that Brussels Airlines has decided to take this flight with the support of its shareholder Lufthansa Group, because as you will see, you will have all the joy of Belgium, all the hospitality of Belgium, but also being part of the biggest aviation group in Europe. And combining these two strengths allows us to give you a unique offering on the market. Let me explain what is Brussels Airlines. I tend to define Brussels Airlines as a small and medium enterprise part of a major group. We have 3,500 employees, 45 different nationalities, so extremely internationally oriented, which you need to be when you're part of such a small country as Belgium in the middle of big Europe. You have immediately to look outwards. But we are responsible as home carrier of Belgium for 10,000 jobs on the home base of Brussels Airport. We have 52 aircraft: 10 A330s, 9 A320s, 22 A319s, and also some regional flights for the smaller destinations. And we have more than 90 destinations. But most importantly, we are a very fast-growing company. In the period between 2013 and 2015, we grew by more than 30%. Our objective by 2018 — and I tend to say that we will be able to reach this objective — is to be at 10 million passengers. By the way, we don't talk about passengers internally; we talk about guests, because we really want to have this approach that we don't treat our passengers as packs, as we say in this industry. These are our guests; we want them to feel at home. But that means that in the period between 2013 and 2018, if we reach our 10 million guest objective, we will have doubled the size of the company. So a very fast-growing and successful company. You see that in 2016, unfortunately, we only grew by 3.2%, while our objective was to be again in double-digit growth. But as you know, Belgium was marked by the terrible events of March 22nd, and so we can say we can be proud that despite those events that marked us — because we had even injured people within the company — we were managing to continue to grow with 3.2% and also to be profitable, which is really a matter of pride within the company.

Our home base is Brussels Airport. I really hope that we will be able to meet soon at Brussels Airport and in Belgium. As you will see, I'm quite proud of being Belgian, because Brussels Airport is a humanized hub: 22 million passengers, easy connections, important cargo activity, but all the facilities of a Star hub. Brussels Airport is at the image of Brussels City. I don't know if some of you have lived in Brussels, but Brussels is a fantastic city because it has the full infrastructure of the biggest capital city in Europe, being the capital city of Europe, where you can find everything you want: theater, opera, restaurants of whatever nationality, extremely multinational, but with 1 million inhabitants. Five kilometers away from my home, you can be in the city center and you can be in the middle of the woods. Well, Brussels Airport is at the image of Brussels City. Basically, you have all the facilities of the best hub of the Star Alliance, but with a human size and extremely fast connections. Humanized airport, short walking distance, smooth flight connections. But while being a small city, we are a small company in a huge market. The catchment area of the Brussels market is more than 20 million people, which makes it, with Frankfurt, the biggest catchment area of the whole Lufthansa Group. We are also geographically very well located. With the plane or with the train, if you want to do business in Paris, you have a train every half an hour bringing you to Paris center in 1 hour 20 minutes. Some people even commute every day between Brussels and Paris. Same with London, that you can even choose between three different airports or even the train as well with the Eurostar. Same with Germany. So really top connections, and top connections with the train at Brussels Airport to all Belgian cities, whether you go for business or whether you go to visit, because we have marvels to discover in Belgium: Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and others. Because we shouldn't forget that this flight between Brussels and Mumbai is extremely symbolic. It's the connection between Mumbai and the capital city of Europe, Brussels. As I told you, Brussels offers very many things to see, but we should never forget it's the home of the Parliament of Europe, the Commission, it's also the NATO headquarters. And I think we have one of the persons with whom, thanks to whom NATO is in Brussels, who's present here on the table. It's also the headquarters of Eurocontrol. We have 210 foreign companies based in Brussels, over 2,000 international companies. Almost every company has its European headquarters based in Brussels. If you wander in Brussels, you will hear Spanish, Italian, German — a multinational city with 381,000 expats. We are just beating Washington in terms of number of lawyers and lobbyists. So next to a very humanized city, enjoyable city, one of the major political and business centers in Europe, next to the mega hubs of Paris, London, and Frankfurt.

Brussels Airlines in there, as I told you, first we are all the joy of an entrepreneurial small country being part of the biggest aviation group in Europe. Since 2009, we have Lufthansa in our capital at the height of 45% at the time, which allowed us to mix the specifics of our company with the suite of the top Lufthansa product that you call Star Alliance. And in that respect, we are very proud to partner with the Indian national carrier Air India, that you call Miles & More, which is the best frequent flyer program. It allowed us to expand our network from a company that was merely focusing on Europe and Africa. We started to develop our network to the United States with today three direct connections from India to JFK, Washington, and also Toronto. In Europe, we have more than 70 destinations with fast growth, as you know. And while being attractive on price, we really want to focus on differentiation and service offering. For example, the best — not me saying, but the CEO of Lufthansa — the best lounge of the whole Lufthansa Group called The Loft. And now, of course, since December 2015, we are very happy to not only be invited at the Lufthansa table but to be a full member of the family, bringing our own specifics and basically being able to leverage the full power of the Lufthansa Group. Our network: you see the different destinations that we present. It's true that we are an African specialist with 20 destinations. Until 2012, 100% of our long-haul network was dedicated to Africa, with a tradition that relates to 80 years ago. I'm also very proud — and it was not easy to be telling you — that Brussels Airlines is the only airline in the world that continued to fly to the three countries touched by the Ebola disease during the Ebola crisis. We never stopped flying. Now everybody says it's great. I can tell you there were some moments where we were not congratulated for that, but we knew it was the right thing to do. We could not leave those countries alone. And basically, we were not part of the problem; we were part of the solution. But it shows our dedication to the African continent that relates to 80 years ago, because our ancestor, Sabena, was built to connect Europe to Africa in the 1920s of last century. But also an extended European network with a mix of business and leisure destinations. Leisure because the Belgians love to spend time in the sun, but business because every morning thousands of people need to come to the capital city of Europe. And as I was telling you, three destinations to the US, top connections from the Indian market, and now a new adventure starting for us with the Indian market.

India is a key market for us. It's first an extremely important economic partner for Belgium, but also with high leisure potential. The demand for direct flights and cargo is extremely high. We're talking about 50,000 guests a year. So that means that Mumbai is the third international destination between Brussels and the rest of the world, behind New York and Bangkok. Mumbai is third, so it was logical we would come here. And we are extremely excited because, thanks to the work of the whole team — and I need to thank them — and showing also the power of the group, despite the fact we only started one month ago, despite the fact that not everything is still settled to go full speed, we already managed to have over the first four weeks of operation a load factor which is above 75%. And I'm still looking for a seat to go back to Belgium because it seems we are even completely full to come back. But I will be very happy to stay longer in this beautiful country. So first positive results. And it will be really a hub functioning with 40% of our guests that will be on a point-to-point, but we also expect 60% of our guests to take the transfer facilities in Brussels, positioning Brussels Airport and Brussels market as one of Lufthansa's major hubs — the humanized hub, as I told you. We are proud members of the Star Alliance since 2009, and since two years, if I'm right, we are extremely happy that India is part of Star Alliance thanks to Air India. And that's why we were delighted to be able to collaborate with the teams of Air India along the whole process. And this materializes in a codeshare that is already existing between us and Air India. That means also that we will have all the advantages of the Star Alliance with lounge access, Miles & More, and all you know already about this. The schedule: I think you should know it by heart now, but we will fly to start with five times a week. We have a departure — I'm being told happily we arrived relatively early for a European flight, so we leave relatively early for a European flight, which allows us to have a good positioning. And you see that next to all the connections, the key ones are present in there. But remember also that Brussels is really the Lufthansa hub positioned on the west coast of Europe, and it's a notion we don't use very often — very strategically positioned between Paris and Amsterdam, and basically allowing you a set of connections, perfect connections amongst others to France. And you find us sometimes called the French hub of the Lufthansa Group, which with our African traffic to France, Spain, and to UK, next to all other capital cities. But that you find also in the other hubs of the Lufthansa Group. And I think this mix, this interconnectivity, this group approach allowing you to really go from one hub to the other is the future. That's the way to basically position ourselves versus competition, offering different travel alternatives, but always with a constant of top quality. And the quality you've known, which is exceptional with companies like Lufthansa and Swiss, is exactly the same you will find within Brussels Airlines, except maybe the food has a Belgian touch. And you will have some Swiss chocolate on the other one, but we still have a battle on which chocolate is the best. So that's the best for you as customer to discover which one it is.

We have a specific mission. And when we defined ourselves, we wanted really to say, okay, if one day Brussels Airlines didn't exist, what would we miss? And this is something that is really important to us. It doesn't look like a marketing buzz. People say, well, what is a mission? We believe a lot in really this why strategy: why do we exist? We are more than an airline. We don't define ourselves as an airline. Our mission is to be the most personal airline, bringing people together, and make travel a pleasure. Let me come back on the three components of that mission. The most personal airline: when we reinvented ourselves in 2013, we said, what can we do? The biggest? I think it's already taken by some others. The best? The brightest? The most innovative? No, we are Belgian. We want to bring you the hospitality of Belgium by making sure that when you fly with Brussels Airlines, you feel at home. That means also that when we screw up, like everybody else, we just make it up. We just try to solve it. We are pragmatic. We want you to feel home on board. Bringing people together is interesting because all my colleagues in airlines say, 'I bring people from A to B.' We say we don't do that; we bring people together. You know, when there was the Ebola crisis, when on March 22nd we were hit and we didn't have an airport anymore, but we had 15,000 people a day to bring on holiday for Easter, we decided to start bases in one day at regional airports. And thanks to the support of Lufthansa, our long-haul flights became out of Zurich and Frankfurt. And that's because we couldn't leave our guests on the side. With the Ebola crisis, we couldn't accept that those countries would be left aside. And that's what it is to bring people together. Bringing people together means that I hope that we will allow Belgians to meet more Indians, to do more business, but also to come here on holiday. And it's more than bringing people from A to B. And making travel a pleasure is key for us. We have this tendency — but you have it in India as well — to have the low-cost industry. The low-cost industry has killed the dream of this industry. You know, there are terrible advertisements when you see people having a very bad experience: the lady has lost her shoe, the kids are with their glasses on the side, they come in a nice hotel — they clearly traveled with a low-cost operator and now they can enjoy the holiday when they come in. We don't want this. We want that the holiday starts at the moment you buy your ticket. My dream is to see young kids flying Brussels-Mumbai and not willing to leave the aircraft because they want to continue to enjoy the inflight program. I think we need to give back this flavor to airlines. The Lufthansa Group is dedicated to that. The low-cost have killed that. People are fed up to be treated as cattle. We need to be back on service. So that's why, next to the most personal airline, and all you know within Brussels Airlines, we have of course a dedicated service to India. We were very happy to greet Indian crew members which came in Brussels, that we greeted as full part of the family. And of course, we will offer all the service you want as Indian guest to have on our flight. And don't hesitate to communicate to us to see how to do more, how to do better.

We have three products. An economy product which I hope you will discover soon, but really offers you state-of-the-art inflight entertainment, spacious legroom, ergonomic seats, but also generous luggage allowance, which is also due to our heritage of doing business to Africa. We have Economy Privilege, which is our premium economy product, offering you extra seat recline, extra catering, extra care, but basically bringing you a top versus the economy product. And finally, we are very proud to have a 22 to 36 full flat business class seat. And we had to make a choice: to have a seat that becomes a bed or a bed that becomes a seat. We chose for the second one, with the comfort. We were the first ones to have this flatbed within the group. We have exactly the same cabin as Swiss is having, for example, and Austrian as well. So it shows the continuity of service. And of course, all the service you can imagine, but I prefer you enjoy them than talking about them. That's much easier in flight. Inflight entertainment, as you know, The Loft — our lounge — we don't call it a lounge. We don't call passengers 'passengers'; we call them 'guests'. We don't call the lounge a lounge because it's not a lounge; it's a loft. And once you will have experienced it, you will see that it has nothing to do with other airport lounges. It really gives you a real experience that I really hope that you will be able to enjoy soon. And of course, we have also important freight activity. For us, freight is very important. It is certainly more than an opportunistic business; it's a key part of our strategy. We transported 36 tons of cargo in 2016, thanks to our unique network offer. Of course, we have a very specific and dedicated business: 'Fresh to Shelf' and also — and I see some people from GSK are present in here — we have some great projects together. But we are working together on transporting pharmaceuticals, knowing that Brussels Airport has also all the necessary licenses to basically handle this type of transport. So Europe's best kept secret is out. There is a direct flight between Mumbai and Brussels which is now available since four weeks. The specifics of Brussels, the power of the Lufthansa Group, the combinability — so really the strength of a group. And that's why I'm so happy we are here all together. And of course, not only between Brussels and Mumbai, but also onwards to Europe, North America, and Africa. And I really hope to see you very soon on board.