Brussels South Charleroi Airport (CRL) to Brussels
Charleroi is 50 km from Brussels and the shuttle to Brussels-Midi takes about an hour, so budget the transfer before you judge the fare.
- Charleroi is about 50 km south of Brussels, in Wallonia. Brussels' actual airport is Zaventem (BRU), which has a railway station under the terminal.
- The Flibco shuttle runs to Brussels-Midi, roughly every 20 to 30 minutes through the day, taking about an hour.
- Fares start around EUR 19 one way booked ahead - buy online, because the desk price is higher.
- Brussels-Midi is the right end of the journey. It is the Eurostar and Thalys station and it is on the metro, so the shuttle drops you somewhere genuinely connected.
- Add the transfer to your arithmetic before booking. A cheap fare into Charleroi plus two shuttle tickets often beats nothing at Zaventem, whose train carries a compulsory supplement of its own.
Where the airport actually is
Charleroi sits about 50 km south of Brussels, near Gosselies in Wallonia. Ryanair and Wizz Air have sold it as "Brussels South" for two decades; there is no such place, and Charleroi is a substantial industrial city in its own right.
Brussels' real airport is Zaventem (BRU), on the north-east side of the city with a station under the terminal.
The shuttle
Flibco runs the connection to Brussels-Midi, departing every 20 to 30 minutes through the day and taking about an hour, traffic permitting.
- Fares start around EUR 19 one way when booked online in advance.
- Buy before you travel. The price at the desk is higher and the queue after a delayed Ryanair arrival is long.
- Brussels-Midi is a genuinely useful terminus - Eurostar, Thalys, mainline domestic trains and two metro lines.
The comparison worth making
The instinct is that Zaventem must be cheaper because it has a train. It is quicker, certainly - about 17 minutes to Brussels-Central - but every ticket to or from Zaventem carries a compulsory rail supplement that roughly doubles the fare for the distance. Charleroi's hour-long coach at around EUR 19 is a worse journey, not necessarily a much worse deal.
What decides it is your onward plan. If you are catching a Eurostar, both routes end at a useful station. If you are connecting to a flight, only one of them is an airport.
Into Charleroi itself
- A local bus links the terminal to Charleroi-Sud station in about twenty minutes, at ordinary TEC fares rather than airport prices.
- From Charleroi-Sud the train to Brussels takes about an hour and costs a fraction of the shuttle. It is the budget route, and almost nobody takes it.
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