Large crowds and longer queues are expected at Belgian airports on Friday, as airlines and passengers are making up for a full day of cancelled flights caused by the national strike on Thursday.
Belgium's biggest airport, Brussels Airport in Zaventem, scheduled 29 additional flights on Friday, bringing the total to 483 flights (departures and arrivals), but has also rebooked passengers onto other available flights.
"As a result, about 10,000 more passengers than we had planned before the announcement of the strike are expected to pass through the airport – bringing the total to approximately 74,000," spokesperson Jeffrey Franssens told The Brussels Times.
While Franssens confirmed that the airport was indeed busier than usual on Friday at 10:00, he stressed that Brussels Airport and its partners deployed enough staff to deal with the higher number of passengers. "Extra airport crew has also been deployed in the departure hall to guide passengers properly, similar to what we do in the summer holidays."
To avoid unexpectedly long queues and travel chaos, the airport advises those flying on Friday to come to the airport well in advance and use its online tool to check when would be the best time to arrive. "People can enter their flight details into the tool, and then they will get the best time slot. This way, they will still have sufficient time to go through all the steps."
'Not much extra space'
Meanwhile, Brussels South Charleroi Airport (BSCA) is expecting some 1,500 extra passengers on its planes, but has not scheduled any extra flights on Friday.
"The flights leaving from here are usually nearly full (nearly 90% capacity), so we do not have much space left for extra passengers," spokesperson Nathalie Pierard told The Brussels Times. "But some 1,500 people who were not able to depart on Thursday will be filling up the remaining 10% of seats on Friday's planes."
While it is possible that some queues will be slightly longer than usual, the airport is not expecting crowds to a similar degree as Brussels Airport.
Air traffic to and from Belgium was heavily disrupted on Thursday due to a national demonstration in Brussels. As the air traffic control staff at Skeyes joined the strike, no planes were able to land or take off from Belgian airports between 06:45 and 22:15.
For more information about the impact of the national strike and why people were striking, see here and here.
This article was updated at 10:15 on Friday morning to reflect the latest situation.
