Brussels Airport
Facts on BRU
The airport began as an occupation project. In 1940 the German forces took 600 hectares of farmland north-east of Brussels and built Fliegerhorst Melsbroek, laying three runways in a triangle. Two of them, 02/20 and 07L/25R, are still in use today.
Source: Wikipedia
Locals called the field Melsbroek because that is where the buildings stood. In April 1956 Belgium decided to build a new airport on the same runways but with its terminal inside the municipality of Zaventem — which is why Belgians still say "Zaventem" when they mean Brussels Airport.
Source: Wikipedia
The Zaventem terminal was inaugurated on 5 July 1958, finished just in time for the Expo 58 world's fair; the grass runway 12/30 was sacrificed to make room for it. The buildings on the Melsbroek side still serve the Belgian Air Force's 15th Air Transport Wing, which shares the runways.
Source: Wikipedia
A railway from the centre of Brussels to the airport was opened by King Baudouin on 15 May 1955, decades before most European airports had a train. The station now sits at level −1, directly beneath the terminal building.
Source: Wikipedia
Brussels works on a one-terminal concept, stacked by function: rail at level −1, buses and taxis at 0, arrivals at 2 and departures at 3. In 2015 a building called the Connector replaced a 400 m tunnel to Pier A, so changing planes no longer means a second security check.
Source: Wikipedia
Two bombs went off in the departures hall at 07:58 on 22 March 2016. The airport stayed shut until 3 April and reopened with temporary facilities at less than 20% of its former capacity; by 29 July that year it was handling a record 90,000 passengers in a single day.
Source: Wikipedia
On 18 February 2013 eight men in police uniforms drove through a hole cut in the perimeter fence to a Helvetic Airways Fokker 100 loading for Zürich and took 120 parcels of diamonds worth an estimated US$50 million. The raid took five minutes, with no shots fired and nobody hurt.
Source: Wikipedia
Sabena Flight 548, a Boeing 707, crashed on approach to runway 20 on 15 February 1961, killing all 72 people aboard and one on the ground. The dead included the entire United States figure skating team, and the world championships in Prague were cancelled out of respect.
Source: Wikipedia
Brussels Airport covers 1,245 hectares (3,076 acres) and has three runways. Around 260 companies are based there, directly employing 20,000 people, and the airport handled more than 26 million passengers in 2019.
Source: Wikipedia