Rumble: And Brussels Airport?

I forgot to mention in my previous rumbles about Sabena, the Swiss Air Crook-ery adventures and the merger of SN with Virgin Express, what happened to Brussels airport.

Well, I guess they recovered. After being used for a fraction of its capacity for years, they recovered, and seem to be doing well. They have more traffic now, So yeah, when coming back home after wandering the world, landing at Brussels national airport certainly puts a smile on my face. Highly recommended for transit travel too.

Two minuses, though:

One of the two handling companies’ customer service sucks. If you decide to loose your luggage, and your end destination is Brussels, you’d better hope your flight is handled by a company called “FlightCare” and not by “AviaPartner” !! If it was not for the goodwill of the FlightCare staff, I would still be waiting for my luggage lost between the islands of St-Martin and St-Kitts, a connecting flight on my way home just before Xmas. This was a return flight handled (or rather, not handled well at all) by AviaPartner. They never even bothered to pick up the phone… In the end the FlightCare staff traced the luggage even though it was not even their flight to handle..

Second problem is that you can not smoke inside the airport anymore. Nowhere! Absolutely nowhere. They used to have restricted areas, and you could smoke in the bars and courtesy lounges. But now.. NOTHING anymore. Ridiculous. At least restricted areas would do. Certainly if they want to be come a transit airport of fame… Smokers go nuts after an eight hours non-smoking flight, waiting for connecting flights to fly six hours transatlantic again.

My tips: try the toilets and the far end corners of terminals A and B. Everyone is doing it there. Smoking that is.

But, I am far away from that now.. Left Brussels. And the yonder is calling…