SN Brussels Airlines (SNBA) was the national airline of Belgium, which mainly operated from

Brussels Airport Brussels Airport, nl, Luchthaven Brussel, vls, Vliegpling Brussel, german: Flughafen Brüssel is an international airport northeast of Brussels, the capital of Belgium. In 2019, more than 26 million passengers arrived or departed at Bruss ...

. SNBA was the trading name of the Belgian airline

Delta Air Transport Delta Air Transport (abbreviated DAT) was a Belgian regional airline headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium, operating scheduled and chartered flights, mostly on short-haul routes. It served a multitude of regional European destinations on behalf o ...

. SNBA was a full-service airline, connecting Brussels with the rest of Europe. It also flew to Africa, continuing

Sabena The ''Societé anonyme belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation aérienne'' (French; ), better known by the acronym Sabena or SABENA, was the national airline of Belgium from 1923 to 2001, with its base at Brussels National Airport. After its ba ...

's extensive network there. The airline merged with

Virgin Express N.V. Virgin Express S.A. was a Belgian airline created within the Virgin Group. It operated flights mainly to southern Europe from its hub at Brussels Airport. Ticket sales were mainly through the Internet. The airline merged with SN Brussels Ai ...

into

Brussels Airlines Brussels Airlines is the flag carrier and largest airline of Belgium, based and headquartered at Brussels Airport. It operates to over 100 destinations in Europe, North America and Africa and also offers charter services, maintenance and crew ...

which started operations on 25 March 2007 The airline had its head office in Airport Building 117 in Brussels Airport, Zaventem, near

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

."World Airline Directory." ''Flight International''. 30 March – 5 April 2004
71

History

The airline was founded in 2002, when a group of Belgian investors (companies, financial institutions and regional investment companies, as well as the

and Walloon governments) set up SN Airholding, headed by

Étienne Davignon Étienne, Count Davignon (born 4 October 1932 in Budapest, Hungary) is a Belgian politician, businessman, and former vice-president of the European Commission. Career After receiving a Doctorate of Law from the Catholic University of Louvain, ...

. After the 2001 collapse of

, Belgium's then

flag carrier A flag carrier is a transport company, such as an airline or shipping company, that, being locally registered in a given sovereign state, enjoys preferential rights or privileges accorded by the government for international operations. Hist ...

airline, Belgium was left without a national airline for a few months. In February 2002, SN Airholding took over the Belgian airline DAT, a subsidiary of

, and changed its trading name to SN Brussels Airlines. In 2002, a strategic reorganization started, led by the former CEO Peter Davies. On 12 April 2005 SN Brussels took holding control of

and on 31 March 2006 they announced their merger. On 7 November 2006 they announced at a press conference held at

that the new airline would be called

Destinations

Fleet

BAE Systems Avro 146-RJ85 - SN Brussels Airlines - OO-DJQ - LEMD

Before merging, SN Brussels Airlines operated the following aircraft:

Codeshare agreements

SN Brussels Airlines had

codeshare agreements A codeshare agreement, also known simply as codeshare, is a business arrangement, common in the aviation industry, in which two or more airlines publish and market the same flight under their own airline designator and flight number (the "airli ...

with the following airlines: *

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Etihad Airways Etihad Airways ( ar, شَرِكَة ٱلْاِتِّحَاد لِلطَّيْرَان, sharikat al-ittiḥād li-ṭ-ṭayarān) is one of two flag carriers of the United Arab Emirates (the other being Emirates). Its head office is in Khalifa ...

Hainan Airlines Hainan Airlines Co., Ltd. (HNA, ) is an airline headquartered in Haikou, Hainan, People's Republic of China. The airline is rated as a 5-star airline by Skytrax. It is the largest civilian-run and majority state-owned air transport company, ...

Jet Airways Jet Airways (India) Ltd is an Indian airline based in Delhi NCR, with a training and developmental center in Mumbai. Incorporated in April 1992 as a limited liability company, the airline began operations as an air taxi operator in 1993. It b ...

Malmö Aviation Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal popu ...

Livery

The airline had various color schemes before finally settling on a uniform scheme for the fleet. The upper fuselage is white, while the belly and engines were painted lilac. An orange cheat line runs between the white and lilac parts of the fuselage. The tail shows the old

"S". The website address is near the end of the fuselage. There are differences in livery between the Avro planes and the Airbus planes: most notably, the company name is written on the white part of the fuselage for the Airbus planes, but on the lilac part on the Avro. Both this livery and the

livery were replaced with the

livery.

Gallery

Image:Avro.rj85.arp.750pix.jpg, SN Brussels Airlines Avro RJ85 Image:Avro RJ85 (SN Brussels Airlines) 091.jpg, SN Brussels Airlines Avro RJ85 at Geneva Airport Image: SN Brussels Airlines B462 OO-DJF 20060217 HAM.jpg, SN Brussels Airlines BAe 146–200 at

Hamburg Airport Hamburg Airport , known in German as ''Flughafen Hamburg'', is a major international airport in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany. Since November 2016 the airport has been christened after the former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. ...

References

External links

Quand la Belgique redécolle : L'express Magazine FrançaisSN Brussels Airlines WebsiteCorporate website SN Brussels AirlinesVideos of Brussels AirlinesSN Brussels Airlines Fleet AgeSN Brussels Airlines fleetSN Brussels Airlines aircraft
{{Authority control Defunct airlines of Belgium Airlines established in 2002 Airlines disestablished in 2007 2006 disestablishments in Belgium Zaventem Belgian companies established in 2002