Brussels Airport was looking to Eurostar to address its need for a high-speed connection to and from the airport, but the rail company has rejected the idea.
Belgium's main airport in Zaventem is urgently looking to reduce the number of short-haul flights, following the "boarding tax" for short-haul flights, introduced last year to deter people from opting to fly for distances that can be covered by alternative means of transport, and the more recent announcement that these flights could even be banned.
Brussels Airlines, a key connection point in the flight hub model, sees many people take long-haul flights to Africa via Brussels Airport. It fears that many of its transfer passengers will be adversely affected by these measures.
While trains to and from Brussels' stations and further afield (including the Dutch capital Amsterdam) are already in place, both companies have stressed the need for a high-speed train connection at the airport to offer transfer passengers from cities in neighbouring countries a fast and simple alternative to short-haul flights.
Not my business
Enter Eurostar, the rail company behind the high-speed train connection to Paris, Amsterdam and London from Brussels' Gare du Midi station. It was hoped that the company could be the missing link in this story by adding another stop to Brussels Airport to its connections.
However, the newly appointed CEO of the merged company of Eurostar and Thalys, Gwendoline Cazenave, has already burst this bubble, saying in an interview with De Tijd that it is "not efficient to create a connection to Brussels Airport."
Despite the fact that Eurostar does stop at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport station, Cazenave said the company wants to concentrate on connections between the city centres and to do so on high-speed lines.
"The reason for our existence is to connect major cities with high-speed lines. We are not going to run on a conventional track with our high-speed trains," she explained, adding that a connection to Brussels Airport would require the company to reduce the frequency of trains between big cities.
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"That would not be efficient. And it is not that there is no alternative: Zaventem airport is not far from Brussels and there are many trains between the airport and Gare du Midi," she argued.
Mobility Minister Georges Gilkinet has also previously stressed that Brussels Airport is on the "wrong side of Brussels" and that a connection would require detours. It is therefore unlikely that the Federal Government will free up additional funds to entice Eurostar.
