For the first time, I decided to try Ryanair when I got four days off this spring. I have always rejected flying with them, primarily because they used an airport that is located far from where I am here in Stockholm. But since the spring of 2022, they now fly to the main airport of Stockholm and the prices are remarkably cheap, so I decided to try them. I found tickets to Brussels, or shall we say Charleroi or simply Belgium? These tickets were both cheap and had decent departure times. However, in Brussels they don't fly to the main airport of Brussels-Zaventem (BRU), instead, they fly to a smaller airport called Brussels-Charleroi (CRL). So how is it flying into this airport?

Generally, I liked the airport and had no problem traveling through it instead of the much larger Brussels-Zaventem. The location isn't great, but a distance of just 46 km (29 mi) from Brussels and within a reasonable distance from several other cities in Central Europe, such as Lille and Luxembourg, it shouldn't be a problem from a logistical point of view. But I will return to that later.

Brussels-Charleroi is a clean and somewhat modern airport as soon as you pass through security. For its size, I certainly felt that it was good enough. I've been through much worse airports in Europe, airports that are the main airport of larger cities or even Capital cities. Before security, there are only a few smaller cafés and a small convenience store. After security, you will pass through the duty-free store and then find yourself at the gates. You only need a minute to reach any Schengen gate after you passed through security. The ground floor is just for the gates and the occasional small store. There's a food court if you go up one level, so it's separated from the gate areas. I liked that separation between the traveling part and the waiting part. You can hang out at the upper level until it's time to fly. At the food court, there's an outdoor sitting area where you can both eat, watch aircraft, or just relax. Perfect on a sunny day at least.

However, I have one huge complaint about this airport!

The distance from Brussels is, as I've already mentioned, only 46 km (29 mi) so it shouldn't be that hard to get into the city. But it is! The shortest official route to get into Brussels is by bus from a company called Flibco, which will take you from right outside the terminal building into Brussels-South railway station (Locally known as Bruxelles-Midi or Brussel-Zuid). The price for this bus route was 15 EUR each way when I booked a few days before departure. I think you can get it for under 10 EUR if you're early and plan your trip a few months ahead. It's a decent price for ground transportation. It's not cheap, but it's not extortionately expensive either. I can live with it.

When I landed I was hoping to quickly get on a bus and get into town so that I would have some hours of sightseeing that afternoon as it was the only day where the weather forecast predicted sunshine and blue skies. What I found was a huge queue!

The bus only leaves every 30 minutes. It could be an effect of the pandemic, but it's still too few departures, and the frequency would have to be at least double even for the current level of air traffic. I spent more time waiting for the bus than I had expected the whole journey into the city to take. I spent over an hour just queueing to get on the bus, and I was lucky because I got one of the last seats on that bus. Otherwise, I would have spent almost two hours in the queue!

After the initial fiasco to leave the airport I did some searches and found that it could be just as bad getting back from the city. This isn't that surprising considering that most people going in one direction would have to go in the other direction in a few days again. I left the city quite early, at 0900 in the morning. At that time there were no massive queues. But the pick-up location is not very well organized. The signage is lacking, to begin with, and the queue started growing from both ends while I stood and waited. Thankfully it never got too long so everyone who waited at this time got a seat on the first bus that arrived, but it would have been an issue if some people got left behind. Make sure to add a buffer for queueing when you go back to the airport so you don't miss your flight. With only two buses an hour, it doesn't take much for you to be over an hour late from what you originally anticipated.

The whole experience of traveling through Brussels-Charleroi Airport gets polluted by the abysmal experience of having to deal with Flibco and the difficulties of traveling the quite short distance into the city of Brussels. The airport itself is good, but the ground transportation is below acceptable levels.

There is an alternative to the Flibco Bus. That is to take a local bus to Charleroi Central and then take a train from there. It does however take two hours or more. It would have been great if they invested a little bit more in the communications there. But I guess that's the price you have to pay for traveling through a low-cost airport.

So in conclusion: If you don't mind that it will take a little bit of time traveling to/from the airport then there's nothing big to complain about with this airport. The actual airport was better than many bigger airports in Europe.