Brussels South Charleroi Airport

Charleroi Brussels South began as a small airfield at Gosselies in the 1910s and 1920s. It sat in the heart of Wallonia's industrial belt, next to an aircraft factory whose successor still builds plane parts beside the runway today. For most of the 1900s, it stayed a modest regional field used for flying schools, business planes, and the odd charter flight.

Belgium's air traffic went mostly through Brussels National at Zaventem instead. Everything changed in 1997, when Ryanair began flying in from Dublin. In 2001 the airline made Charleroi one of its bases and branded it Brussels South, even though it sits roughly 50 kilometers from the capital. That deal led to a landmark 2004 European Commission ruling on airline subsidies, a case that shaped budget airline deals across Europe.

Passenger numbers climbed from a few hundred thousand a year in the late 1990s to more than eight million before the pandemic. Wizz Air added its own base in 2018. Workers stretched the runway to about 3,200 meters in 2013, the terminal grew again and again. A long planned train link is still in the works today. Step by step, an old industrial airfield slowly became Belgium's second busiest airport.

Charleroi has one runway, 06/24, stretched to about 3,200 meters so it can take large jets, even though almost every flight here is a short, narrow-body hop. A compact terminal, expanded several times and still growing, moves passengers through a modest number of gates. Most travelers board on foot, walking across the open ramp area near the parked planes, called the apron.

Ryanair keeps a large fleet based here and supplies most of the seats, with Wizz Air a clear second. Flights lean heavily toward Morocco, Spain, Italy, and Central and Eastern Europe. There is still no train station at the airport, so buses carry passengers into the city of Charleroi and onward to Brussels.