Brussels Airlines faces the prospect of targeted industrial action on its Tel Aviv operation after Belgian union ACV Puls filed a strike notice over the way crews are assigned to the route.
The union said its notice took effect September 1, but it has not called an immediate strike. ACV Puls said action could follow if Brussels Airlines continues assigning employees who have not volunteered to operate flights to Israel.
Any disruption would be limited to services between Brussels Airport (BRU) and Tel Aviv Ben Gurion (TLV), according to the union. The rest of the Brussels Airlines network is not covered by the threat.
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Union Challenges End of Volunteer Crewing
The dispute centers on a volunteer arrangement used when Brussels Airlines returned to Tel Aviv during the summer. ACV Puls said the carrier had previously agreed to staff the service only with employees who had put themselves forward for the assignment.
The union claims Brussels Airlines is moving away from that arrangement because it does not have enough volunteers and intends to place the flights into its regular crew allocation process. That would allow pilots and cabin crew to be rostered for Tel Aviv without volunteering in advance.
ACV Puls argues that employees with serious safety, psychological or ethical objections should be allowed to decline the assignment without financial, disciplinary or career consequences.
“A lack of volunteers is not a license to force employees,” the union said in its September 1 statement. It accused the airline of breaking its earlier understanding with employee representatives and failing to account adequately for health and safety risks.
The strike notice creates a framework for action rather than confirming that flights will be canceled. The union said it would protect employees who refuse an assignment to what it considers a war destination.
Tel Aviv Flights Returned in August
Brussels Airlines’ latest return to Israel took place in August. QAS Israel, the Lufthansa Group’s ground-handling partner at TLV, publicly marked the carrier’s return to Ben Gurion and said its teams handled the arriving aircraft, crew and passengers.
The airline is selling nonstop service under flight numbers SN3289 and SN3290. Its published Brussels–Tel Aviv timetable shows a 9:45 a.m. departure from BRU, arriving at TLV at 3:15 p.m. local time. The return leaves Tel Aviv at 4:15 p.m. and reaches Brussels at 8:05 p.m.
The outbound sector is blocked at four hours and 30 minutes, with four hours and 50 minutes allocated for the westbound return. Brussels Airlines’ timetable currently identifies Monday, Wednesday and Thursday operations, although the carrier warns that its schedule is subject to change.
Published schedule data assigns the Airbus A320neo to SN3289. The aircraft has 180 seats in Brussels Airlines service and is well matched to a roughly 1,750-nautical-mile sector that sits toward the longer end of the carrier’s medium-haul network.
Brussels Airlines had eight Airbus A320neos in its fleet at July 31, alongside 16 earlier-generation Airbus A320s and 13 A319s. The neo combines the capacity of the carrier’s standard A320 with lower fuel burn and a substantially smaller departure noise footprint.
Travel Advisory Remains in Place
ACV Puls has tied its objections partly to the Belgian government’s assessment of conditions in Israel. Belgium’s Foreign Affairs ministry continues to advise against nonessential travel to Israel and Jerusalem, citing a volatile security situation in the Middle East.
The advisory is not a prohibition on commercial service, and European airlines continue to make their own operational decisions using internal security assessments, government information and conditions at individual airports. That distinction is central to the dispute: a destination can remain open to scheduled airlines while governments advise their citizens not to make discretionary trips.
ACV Puls nevertheless argues that Brussels Airlines cannot treat Tel Aviv as an ordinary assignment while that advisory remains in effect. It also cited the psychological and ethical impact on employees, broadening the dispute beyond the airline’s assessment of immediate flight and airport security.
Brussels Airlines and other Lufthansa Group carriers have repeatedly suspended and restarted Tel Aviv operations as conditions changed. When Brussels Airlines announced an earlier return in 2024, it said flights would operate under additional precautions and that passenger and employee security remained its priority. A further restart announced for February 2025 was similarly described as gradual and subject to continuing review.
A Narrowly Focused Labor Dispute
The notice is unusually specific compared with network-wide airline labor disputes. ACV Puls is not challenging pay, schedules or staffing across Brussels Airlines as a whole. It is contesting the removal of an opt-in system for one politically and operationally sensitive destination.
That narrow scope may limit the immediate passenger impact, particularly while the route operates at a modest frequency. It also gives both sides room to negotiate a Tel Aviv-specific arrangement without reopening Brussels Airlines’ wider crew rostering rules.
Possible compromises could include retaining a volunteer pool, creating a formal opt-out for documented objections, or agreeing to review the staffing model whenever the government’s travel advice or the airline’s security assessment changes. ACV Puls’ position, however, is that employees must retain an unconditional ability to refuse the assignment without penalty.
For now, Brussels Airlines continues to sell the route and has not removed SN3289 or SN3290 from its published schedule. Passengers are therefore facing a strike threat rather than a confirmed program of cancellations.
Bottom Line
The dispute tests whether an airline can return a conflict-sensitive destination to routine operations before its workforce considers the assignment routine. Brussels Airlines has moved beyond the exceptional first phase of its latest restart, but ACV Puls is signaling that a successful series of flights is not, by itself, enough to normalize crew allocation.
The outcome will matter beyond the small number of weekly rotations involved. Airlines regularly use volunteer crewing when restoring service after a security-driven suspension, but those arrangements become harder to sustain as frequencies grow and volunteers cycle through duty limits. If the union secures a continuing right to decline Tel Aviv trips, Brussels Airlines may need to treat the route as a permanent special operation rather than another line in the monthly roster.
The next point to watch is whether the strike notice produces a negotiated staffing protocol or advances to actual disruption. A settlement would preserve the route while acknowledging employee concerns; targeted action would expose how quickly a crew-assignment dispute can undermine the reliability of a service that has only recently returned.
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