Liège’s Last Scheduled Departure: How LGG Quietly Became Passenger-Free Overnight
Liège Airport (LGG) has never tried to be Brussels Airport (BRU) with a different postcode. For decades, its identity has been built around freighters, integrators, and the kind of time-critical logistics that makes “quiet hours” a foreign concept. Still, LGG kept a small but steady passenger heartbeat through one operator: TUI fly Belgium.
That era effectively ended on Sunday, January 4, 2026.
By the end of the evening, Liège Airport’s (LGG) scheduled passenger slate was gone, following TUI fly Belgium’s long-planned withdrawal after more than three decades of regular operations. For an airport whose passenger offering was already niche and leisure-focused, losing its only consistent carrier isn’t a schedule tweak. It’s a structural reset.
The Final Rotation Out of Liège (LGG)
The last scheduled passenger departure from Liège Airport (LGG) was TUI fly Belgium flight TB2681 to Tangier Ibn Battouta Airport (TNG). The service was operated by a Boeing 737-800 (B738), registered OO-JAQ.
If you want symbolism in aviation, it’s hard to miss it here. The 737-800—arguably the workhorse narrowbody of Europe’s leisure and low-cost flying for the last two decades—was the type that carried LGG’s passenger operations to the finish line. In typical charter-airline fashion, the aircraft choice is all about right-sizing: enough seats to keep unit costs attractive, enough range to cover the southern Mediterranean with comfortable margins, and mature reliability for a tight rotation pattern.
The Boeing 737-800 sits in Boeing’s 737 Next Generation family, with a maximum certified seating capacity of 189 in a high-density, single-class layout, and commonly around the 160-seat range in a two-class setup depending on cabin product and galley/closet choices. Powered by CFM56-series engines in the NG line, the aircraft became the backbone of short- to medium-haul flying precisely because it’s predictable: dispatch reliability, established maintenance ecosystems, and a performance envelope that works across a wide variety of runway lengths and climates.
For LGG, that matters. The airport’s primary runway system includes a long 04R/22L strip well suited for heavy freighter movements and wide operational flexibility. Passenger flying wasn’t constrained by runway performance; it was constrained by demand, network logic, and competitive geography.
Why TUI Couldn’t Make Liège (LGG) Work Anymore
TUI’s decision was not framed as a sudden exit driven by a single event. The airline cited persistent profitability challenges from Liège Airport (LGG) and limited potential to materially improve performance in the short to medium term. When a leisure carrier starts talking like that, it usually means the fundamentals are no longer negotiable:
Liège (LGG) sits in a dense airport catchment where passengers can “vote with their wheels.” Brussels (BRU) offers the broadest network and frequency. Brussels South Charleroi (CRL) is built for low-cost scale. Even airports just across borders can be viable alternatives depending on where a traveler lives and what price point they’re chasing. In that environment, a small, single-carrier passenger program at LGG is always fighting uphill—especially when the airport’s dominant identity is cargo-first.
There’s also the operational reality of aircraft deployment. A 737-800 (B738) is a profit machine when you can keep it flying, keep load factors healthy, and minimize inefficiencies across the week. A small outstation schedule that can’t support strong utilization—or that relies on thin leisure demand peaks—quickly becomes the place you redeploy capacity away from when the broader network needs optimization.
The Tell in the Return Flight: Tangier (TNG) to Brussels (BRU)
One detail underlines the finality of the move: the return sector from Tangier (TNG), flight TB2662, was routed to Brussels Airport (BRU), not back to Liège (LGG).
Operationally, that’s a clean way to close a chapter. You complete the last outbound passenger segment from the retiring station, then reposition the aircraft into the airline’s main operating ecosystem—where crew, maintenance, spares, and next-day rotations are already concentrated. It avoids leaving an aircraft “orphaned” at a station you’re exiting, and it reduces the risk of the last day turning into a recovery problem if anything runs late.
For airline planners, it’s also the quiet confirmation that this wasn’t a pause. It was a base closure in practice, even if the network impact looks small on a route map.
What This Means for Liège Airport (LGG)
Liège Airport (LGG) isn’t losing relevance—far from it. It’s losing a passenger identity it no longer needed to defend.
LGG’s core is freight. It is built around the infrastructure, operating philosophy, and community of cargo aviation: large warehouse footprints, high-throughput ground handling, and schedules shaped by night waves and long-haul freighter banks rather than weekend leisure peaks. In recent years, cargo volumes at Liège (LGG) have been measured in the seven figures annually (in tonnes), putting it firmly in the top tier of European air freight gateways.
From a strategic perspective, the end of regular passenger flying can even be clarifying. Passenger operations introduce a different service profile: terminal staffing rhythms, security throughput peaks, customer-facing disruption handling, and brand expectations that don’t necessarily align with a cargo-dominant airport’s operating model. When passenger volumes are limited and concentrated in a single carrier, the business case for maintaining that parallel world becomes harder to justify—especially if the airport’s growth engine is elsewhere.
That said, “no regular scheduled passenger flights” does not mean “no passengers ever.” Airports like Liège (LGG) can still see:
-
ad hoc charter movements,
-
sports team and ACMI-related passenger sectors,
-
diversions and irregular ops handling,
-
and government/VIP movements.
But the difference is consistency. Scheduled passenger service is a promise to the market. Without it, the passenger terminal becomes an occasional tool rather than a daily product.
The Belgian Market Angle: Consolidation, Not Collapse
Zooming out, this is also a familiar European pattern. Secondary airports can thrive on passengers when they have either (1) a powerful low-cost base building dense frequency, or (2) a distinct geographic advantage that funnels a captive catchment. Without one of those, leisure flying tends to consolidate where scale is already established.
For Belgium, that gravitational pull sits with Brussels (BRU) for network breadth and Charleroi (CRL) for low-cost volume. In that context, Liège (LGG) reverting to what it does best—freight—reads less like a retreat and more like specialization hardening into a long-term strategy.
Bottom Line
Liège Airport (LGG) didn’t “lose” passenger flying so much as it outgrew the need to pretend passengers were central to its story. With TUI fly Belgium’s final scheduled departure—TB2681 on a Boeing 737-800 (B738) to Tangier (TNG)—and the aircraft’s return sector routing into Brussels (BRU), LGG’s passenger era closed neatly and decisively.
For aviation professionals, the takeaway is straightforward: in a crowded catchment, marginal scheduled passenger networks don’t survive on nostalgia. Meanwhile, airports with a clear cargo proposition—capacity, infrastructure, and operational philosophy aligned to freight—tend to get stronger when they focus.
