In course of this week Brussels Airlines will gradually reduce its flights and starting 21 March the airline will stop its operations until 19 April. The measure was taken in response to extremely low demand and limited possibilities to enter many countries on lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus.

The national carrier of Belgium will attempt to bring all citizens back home before the flights are suspended. Therefore, the airline will leave some aircraft on standby to operate repatriation flights if required.

“We will continuously monitor the situation and communicate accordingly, planning a restart of our operations on 20 April to welcome our guests on board again. As a responsible company, we need to take the decision to temporarily cease our operations. It will allow us to reduce the negative financial impact on our company”, said Dieter Vranckx, Brussels Airlines CEO Dieter Vranckx.

Together with this decision comes the necessity to deal with the employees. Brussels Airlines makes all the efforts to secure working places and expects to negotiate a possibility of “the partial temporary technical unemployment to 100% for the period of the temporary flight suspension”.

Although some exceptions could be made in case of the repatriation flights and the restart of the operations.

This is not the first full temporary shutdown of the carrier in Europe. Earlier airBaltic said it will halt operations until 14 April, while Austrian Airlines grounded its flights until 28 March.