In May and June 2023, we travelled from east to west across Canada. From Halifax in Nova Scotia to Montreal in Quebec, to Toronto in Ontario, to Vancouver and Whistler in British Columbia. Along the way some night trains and commuter trains, the Niagara Falls and – imagine this – a bus journey. A true Trans-Canada Train Trek.

Our Trek across Canada started with a trip by train from our hometown Antwerp to Brussels Airport. From there we would board a Brussels Airlines to Munich, from where we would continue on Lufthansa to Montreal before a final change onto an Air Canada flight to remote Halifax.

As usual we booked our flights almost a year in advance but this time we had a big number of changes in our itinerary from flight times over equipment changes to even a complete change of airline. Originally our flight to Munich was to be operated by Lufthansa but after a shuffling around of flights within the airline group the flight from Brussels to Munich was now operated by the Belgian daughter company Brussels Airlines.

Because we were flying from the Brussels Airlines home base of Brussels we could make use of the all-flights self-service bag drop as the system had us checked-in automatically and sent us our boarding passes by e-mail. The bag drop was fast and smooth and we were true all checks and security within no-time. As Brussels airlines has no complimentary in-flight service we had a light lunch at the airport before our flight took-off.

Flight SN2645
From Brussels (BRU) 13:45 (14:30) to Munich (MUC) 15:05 (15:29)
Flight Time 1 hours and 00 minutes
Airbus A319-111 OO-SSX
Delivered to Frontier Airlines in July 2004
Flying for Brussels Airlines since September 2016

Boarding was delayed due to a late inbound aircraft and our take-off was further delayed due to airspace restrictions imposed by the German air traffic control. This made us slightly worried about our relatively short connection in Munich, especially as we were thinking we might make it but our bags wouldn’t.

Eventually we left 45 minutes late bound for Munich. At boarding there was one final seat change as the cabin crew asked Sam and me to change one row forward as they needed some people to guard the emergency exits. Instead of our seats in the ‘normal’ row 11 we got the extra spacious emergency exit row seats at row 10, with three seats each to spread out. This was possible due to a very light load on the aircraft.

The flight itself was smooth and uneventful. Brussels Airlines has a standard 3-3 seating on it’s
Airbus narrowbody fleet with the standard Lufthansa group slimline Recaro seats. During the buy on board round both Sam and me bought a drink to pass the time. Prices of the on-board menu weren’t exaggerated and on-par with airport prices.

Landing and touchdown where uneventful and after a reasonably fast taxi we parked at a jetway equipped gate at the main part of ‘Lufthansa-Land’ Terminal 2 of Munich Airport.

We made our way off the plane as fast as possible for our onward flight to Montreal, the story continues next week…