Airport Guide

History of Brussels South Charleroi Airport

Dating back to 1919, aeronautical activities at Gosselies in the heart of the Belgian province of Wallonia have only recently become commercial.

For the first few decades, the site served as a flying school and then as a base for aircraft manufacturers to test out their new products.

While it served as a public airport briefly after the end of the Second World War, and then again in the late 1970s, services to destinations such as London, Liege, the Mediterranean coast or even Algeria were always abandoned due to a lack of passenger demand.

It was only in 1997 with the arrival of budget airline Ryanair and the rebranding as Brussels South Charleroi Airport that it found commercial success.

The Irish low-cost carrier established its first continental base in Charleroi, thanks partly to subsidies paid by the Walloon government, and since then a number of its peers have also followed suit, making the airport one of the principal gateways for budget travellers to the Benelux countries.

Travelling to Brussels South Charleroi Airport

There are regular quick and easy links from the airport to the nearby historic Charleroi.

Local TEC buses pick up passengers from the terminal every half an hour, with journeys taking no more than 20 minutes, with excellent links from Charleroi South train station to the rest of Belgium available.

For those passengers for Brussels, a special coach runs to the Brussels South train station (actually in the heart of the capital) every 45 minutes, though the journey time is around one hour.

For car drivers, the airport is easily accessible from the main highway linking Brussels, Liege and the French city of Lille.

Airlines Flying From Brussels South Charleroi Airport

Unsurprisingly, since it was Ryanair that put Charleroi on the international aviation map, it dominates the airport's relatively small space of tarmac.

The low-cost airline offers routes to more than a dozen destinations, including, with flights from and to Alicante, Dublin, Glasgow-Prestwick, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Rome, Shannon and Venice.

The second-largest airline flying out of Brussels South, fellow budget carrier Wizz Air, offers just five routes in comparison, namely services to Bucharest, Budapest, Katowice, Sofia and Warsaw.

Notably, Moroccan low-cost airline Jet4you will soon be offering cheap flights to Casablanca and Oujda, while Jetairfly and On Air fly to Palma de Mallorca and Pescara respectively.