The last Brussels Airlines flight to Mumbai takes off this Sunday

India is a difficult market with strong competition. Many airlines have retreated from that country, which is additionally entangled in a heavy bureaucracy. Brussels Airlines will be no exception.

The Belgian flag carrier is operating its last flight SN601 to Mumbai this Sunday.

The company announced in September that it would stop the route from 7 January 2018 for economic reasons and deploy the freed A330 capacity on the routes to Banjul and Dakar, part of the Africa network which is the core of Brussels Airlines’ long-haul activity.

The flights to Mumbai were launched on 30 March 2017 to fill the gap left by Jet Airways when it moved its activities to Amsterdam Schiphol. They became rather popular and the load factor was good. Brussels Airlines even mulled flying to a second destination in India: Delhi. But it appeared soon that the yield was insufficient, hence the decision to abandon the route.

The return flight SN602 will arrive at Brussels Airport on Monday morning.

The last Mumbai flight will be operated by the Airbus A330-200 registered OO-SFU (picture above), the same aircraft that carried out the inaugural flight.