From September 7th, there will be a new high-speed train connection between Antwerp and Cologne, with a stop at Brussels Airport. The new train connection, which will run twice a day in each direction and will also stop in Liège and Leuven in Belgium, will be launched by Deutsche Bahn.

Brussels Airlines, among others, will sell tickets for these ICE trains. It has entered into a codeshare agreement with the German railway company for this purpose.

Separate carriage

Thanks to the codeshare agreement with Deutsche Bahn, the train journey will also have a Brussels Airlines flight number. This partnership will offer passengers seamless connections at Brussels Airport, allowing them to transfer to more than 180 destinations in the airport’s network in Zaventem.

In other words, travelers can book a single ticket for the entire journey, including both the train journey to/from Germany and the Brussels Airlines flight to/from the airport. They will then be allocated a reserved seat in a separate carriage on the train. However, they will still have to carry their own luggage between the train station and the airport.

“Many people are living in western Germany who have roots in sub-Saharan Africa, and they can now travel to Africa more easily with us,” says Dorothea von Boxberg, CEO of Brussels Airlines. She adds that the airline is working on more train connections.

Approximately a two-hour journey

The new connection also means that a high-speed train will once again stop at Brussels Airport, something the airport has been advocating for a long time – until 2015, Thalys trains stopped regularly.

“We are delighted that Brussels Airport is once again connected to the high-speed network, which is an important step for Belgium’s international connectivity,” says Arnaud Feist, CEO of Brussels Airport.

“Intermodality is indeed one of our strategic objectives, and we are strongly committed to developing a robust, future-oriented network that reinforces our role as a major intermodal hub. This will ensure an even more efficient and sustainable way to travel to and from the airport.”

The first train from Cologne arrives at Brussels Airport at around 8:30 a.m. The journey takes approximately two hours. There are already 8 ICE trains per day in both directions between Germany (Frankfurt, Cologne, Aachen) and Belgium. These also stop in Liège but then continue to Brussels.

There are also Eurostar high-speed trains between Belgium and Germany.