Brussels Airport is once again a rail-and-air hub. On 7 September, a Deutsche Bahn ICE train pulled into the airport's station — which sits directly beneath the terminal — for the first time in more than a decade, restoring a high-speed international rail link that Belgium's biggest airport had lost since 2015.
The new route runs between Cologne and Antwerp, with stops in Aachen, Liège and Leuven. Two return services run daily, so travellers from western Germany can now roll up to the departure hall by train, and arriving flyers can head straight into Germany without setting foot in a car.
The service is the result of a partnership signed in February between Brussels Airlines and Deutsche Bahn. Its most practical feature: combined rail-plus-flight tickets on a single booking. Anyone flying with Brussels Airlines from or to western Germany can book the train leg as part of their journey, with more than 180 destinations worldwide reachable through the airport. So far, New York, Accra and Alicante top the list of where intermodal passengers are heading, and over 1,000 tickets have been sold since the deal was announced.
There's real protection built in, too. If a delay causes you to miss your flight, your connection is guaranteed — a big deal for anyone who has nervously watched a train creep through the German border region before a transatlantic departure. Travellers also earn miles through Lufthansa's Miles & More programme on the rail portion.
Brussels Airport CEO Arnaud Feist framed the move as a step towards the airport becoming a genuinely intermodal hub with lower-carbon access options, and hinted that more high-speed connections could follow. Deutsche Bahn, meanwhile, sees Cologne and Brussels Airport as two key hubs worth wiring together for cross-border journeys.
Why should travellers care? If you're based in Cologne, Aachen or anywhere along that corridor, catching a long-haul flight just got a lot simpler — no parking fees, no motorway traffic, one ticket covering the whole trip. It's also handy in the other direction: land at Brussels Airport from anywhere and you can be in Cologne in one seamless hop. And for anyone choosing between flying short-haul and taking the train, a rail leg that's protected against delays removes one of the biggest risks of mixing modes. Expect this kind of air-rail pairing to become more common across Europe as airports chase greener access — Brussels is simply first back on this particular platform.
Via Euronews Travel.