On Monday morning, 3 June, the first flight took off from Brussels Airport. And that called for cake and a water salute!
The first flight (SN 481) on the new route from Brussels Airport to Jomo Kenyatta Airport (NBO) in Nairobi took off at around 11 am.
Henceforth, our home carrier will operate six flights a week to the Kenyan capital.
Nairobi is Brussels Airlines' 18th destination in sub-Saharan Africa. The new route was officially inaugurated with an event at the gate in the presence of Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib and Kenyan ambassador to Belgium Bitange Ndemo. Also attending were Dorothea von Boxberg, CEO of Brussels Airlines, and Arnaud Feist, CEO of Brussels Airport.
The flights to Nairobi are not only attractive for tourists who want to go to Kenya to spot the Big Five and then travel on to the beaches of Mombasa.
Nairobi is also one of Africa's key economic growth centres and an incubator for innovative startups.
Interest in the new route is high: even before the first flight took off, 50,000 tickets had already been sold and the first flights are completely sold out.