The Walloon Minister in charge of Airports, Adrien Dolimont (MR), spoke regarding the situation at Brussels South Charleroi Aiport. As a reminder, following two days of strikes paralyzing the airport, flights departing from Charleroi were simply canceled on Wednesday. Interview.
An agreement has been reached between unions and management: does this good news mean the resumption of activities at the airport?
“Yes, the latest news anyway. Thursday, we restart normally.”
The social conflict had a three-day impact on the entire airport. Will solutions be put in place to prevent this kind of situation from happening once more?
“In the agreement that was formulated, we wanted to promote social consultation, it had not been formalized until now. In quotes, we want to force meetings – and the two parties are in complete agreement The common objective is to promote the proper functioning of the airport, so I hope that such a situation will not happen once more. As I have already said, the images we have seen over the past two days do not are not acceptable. It does not give a good image of the airport.”
As majority shareholder, is there a message that the Walloon Region wants to convey to the airport and its workers?
“I had the opportunity to discuss it with them directly on Tuesday during meetings at my office. What must be avoided is that the situation leads to airport blockages: it is unacceptable and to be avoided, at all costs. To achieve this, discussion is one of the tools. But we must not believe either that every time we threaten to paralyze the airport, we will get what we want . On the contrary, the agreement that emerged on Tuesday evening is balanced, contrary to what I have read. In view of the development of the airport in the coming years, the public market will be relaunched in a single batch. But we keep in perspective this desire to split into two lots to ensure the smooth operation of the airport. I also supported BSCA’s position, because there have already been difficulties and it has already been necessary to call on the Protection Unit in certain cases, as was the case on Monday and Tuesday. For the moment, nothing changes, but when the infrastructure is more suitable, we do not want to close the possibility of returning to a two-lot solution.
Between 13,000 and 20,000 people will have been impacted, according to our estimates, over three days
“I was told 5,000 on Monday, 5,000 on Tuesday, and then the canceled flights on Wednesday. For the precise and quantified impact, I don’t have it yet, but I asked for it at the airport. The airlines thankfully seem to be open to refunds, which is great news for people who have been singled out without asking. I am still happy to have been able to speed up the meetings to conclude an agreement : the operation of the airport held hostage like this, I repeat, was not acceptable. The main thing is that we can restart the tool.”
Do you think there is a communication problem between the airport and passengers, as Test-Achat pointed out on Tuesday?
“There was a problem in communication at one point, with passengers. It is difficult to communicate as widely as the area covered by the airport of course, but I have been told of customers who have presented this Wednesday at the airport while it was closed. People from the Netherlands, for example. It is therefore that something did not work at the level of communication. We will have to draw the conclusions to improve the situation in the future.”