Brussels Airlines: avoid this airline at all costs

I am typing to you from a poky little hotel in Bujumbura Burundi after Brussels Airlines cancelled my flight home.

Let me give you a few facts about my experience with this Mickey Mouse airline which might help you decide to avoid them if at all possible.

Today I tried to reconfirm my flight, which they insist on if it is a flight outside Europe. If you do not they simply cancel your reservation without warning and you have to buy another ticket.

Which is especially worrying since it is impossible to reconfirm your flight on their lousy website, which just sends an email to their HQ - so if you're lucky someone checks their inbox in time. If you're not you get bumped off your flight. No bother, I thought, I will ask my partner to call them for me - especially since their office here in Burundi was not answering their phone. So she called them from London, to be told yes, I was confirmed and there was no problem with the flight. Which is interesting because if the flight was cancelled they would have known by then because it would not have taken off from Brussels Airport in order to get here in time.

They were either lying (most likely) or they didn't know.  Either way tells you all you need to know about them.

And all this on top of having my flight two weeks ago from Brussels to Burundi also cancelled - again with no notice despite the fact that they could have told me when I checked in for my flight at Heathrow allowing me to spend another 24 hours with my family.

All you get at the airport every time they cancel your flight is some photocopied letter expressing 'regret' at the 'technical incident' that just has the date changed at the top - I am building up quite a collection of them - all identical -  from this crappy airline. Please, for goodness sake, you owe it to yourself - DO NOT USE THIS AIRLINE UNLESS YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER OPTION WHATSOEVER!!!