Air Belgium (KF, Brussels Charleroi) chief executive Niky Terzakis has outlined the carrier's planned Chinese network operations, tentatively due to launch during the final quarter of the year.

In an interview with Le Soir, Terzakis said that in addition to its current 3x weekly Brussels Charleroi-Hong Kong International flights, Air Belgium would target Zhengzhou from late September followed by Wuhan in October, and finally Taiyuan in November.

Also in October, Air Belgium hopes to begin interline operations with Asian partner carriers. According to Terzakis, Air Belgium passengers will be able to book flights to between four and six destinations in Asia using Hong Kong as a transit point.

"From Charleroi, we'll be able to reach cities like Tokyo (Japan) and Cebu (Philippines)," he said.

Commenting on the Hong Kong route's performance thus far, the CEO said that although load factors ranged between 50 and 60% on its launch in June/July, they have since gone up with figures for August showing between 75 and 85% on "some days".

Air Belgium currently operates three A340-300s of which one, OO-ABE (msn 938), is wet-leased out to Air France (AF, Paris CDG) for use on its Paris CDG-Lagos, Nigeria route.