Air Belgium (KF, Brussels Charleroi) has announced it would suspend its only current scheduled route from Charleroi to Hong Kong International between October 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019. The airline said that its Chinese partner Utour had not fulfilled its obligations regarding both pricing and traffic volume.

"Under these conditions, Air Belgium is unwilling to carry out the winter program as initially planned and to endanger its financial position. In good faith we’ve tried to find a solution for our partner’s defaulting situation to date," the Belgian airline said.

Air Belgium added that it would continue to operate on an ACMI basis for other carriers and that it planned to go ahead with plans to launch non-stop services between Charleroi and secondary destinations in mainland Chin. It specifically mentioned Zhengzhou as one potential destination.

The airline currently operates 2x weekly between Charleroi and Hong Kong. One of its four A340-300s is currently wet-leased to British Airways (BA, London Heathrow) operating a daily Heathrow-Abu Dhabi International service. According to the ch-aviation schedules module, this short-term contract is currently scheduled to terminate on October 5.