From November, Brussels Airlines is discontinuing a direct connection between Vilnius and Brussels, which is home to all the main institutions of the European Union as well as a large Lithuanian community. The company says the suspension is temporary, but some aviation experts doubt it, warning that Vilnius may be left without a connection with the EU capital.
Robertas Pogorelis, a traveler and travel blogger who moved to Brussels a year ago, noticed the changes when his relatives had their flights cancelled by the airline.
“Brussels Airlines just sent me a text message saying that one of my friends’ flights had been cancelled. Then I saw that there was no flight at all between Vilnius and Brussels on the winter schedule,” he said.
Robertas is not hiding his disappointment – his plans are falling through and it will be much harder for him to return to Lithuania to visit family and friends.
“It’s not the worst thing in life, of course, but it will be more inconvenient – I’ll have to pay more, it will take longer to get there,” he says.
At Brussels Airport, planes to Lithuania are still taking off, but only until the end of October.
Afterwards, passengers will have a few options – either catch a connection in Frankfurt, Riga or Warsaw, or travel from Kaunas to Charleroi Airport, an hour away from Brussels. People say this is inconvenient, especially when many go to Brussels for work.
Brussels is home to the European Union’s main institutions, with MEPs taking wing every month. National ministers regularly travel to attend EU Council meetings. There are also important meetings at the NATO headquarters, also based in Brussels, and a large community of Lithuanian business people and students in Belgium.
Brussels Airlines refused to comment, only sending a written reply. Due to low demand between Brussels and Vilnius during the winter season, the flights will not be operated during this period, according to the company.
The airline says this is a temporary suspension and that it will resume flights in April. However, aviation expert Simonas Bartkus doubts it.
“Vilnius-Brussels is one of those routes that is definitely not seasonal, and in some cases may even be counter-seasonal. If a route is taken down during the winter months, there is probably an 80-90% chance that it will not return for the summer,” he believes.
Aurimas Stikliunas, head of aviation services at Lithuanian Airports, says the opposite is true – the Vilnius-Brussels flights will not only return, but will be more frequent.
“We have managed to reach a preliminary agreement that the service will return from the summer season and, at least for today, we are arranging a schedule of four weekly flights,” Stikliunas has said.
If, however, Brussels Airlines decides otherwise, there are some options available to Lithuania. The government could subsidise the flight, as it has been doing for several years with the direct flight to London City Airport.
However, this would first require a green light from the European Commission, which is skeptical of such support, saying it distorts competition and costs the state millions every year.
Therefore, Lithuania is considering a new risk-sharing model, which it has never used before. It will be used to ensure connections with destinations that are deemed strategically important for Lithuania.
“When we talk about attracting strategic flights, we clearly understand that they do not come naturally. This means that there must be a mechanism of incentives,” says Agne Vaiciukeviciute, deputy minister of transport.
Under the new programme, for routes that are strategically important but not profitable for airlines, the government could reimburse part of the unfilled seats or flight charges.
So far, however, Brussels has not been included among the strategically important destinations, although it may change.
“We certainly hope that in the near future the government will find the funds, which are not even that large in the scale of things,” Vaiciukeviciute says.
For the time being, Lithuania will remain the only one of the Baltic States without a connection to Brussels. The only European Union destinations without flights are Larnaca in Cyprus and Bratislava in Slovakia, but the latter is just half an hour away from Vienna Airport. (LRT/Business World Magazine)
