Sabena: New York to Brussels to Paris via Hélicoptère, c.1957

 

A lesser-remembered chapter of the old Belgian flag-carrier Sabena is the airline's experiment with helicopter services. The handsome poster above is surely from the late 1950s, showing the DC-7 which arrived in 1957 to serve the airline's long-haul routes but was supplanted only three years later in 1960 by the Boeing B707. 

Details of Sabena's unique rotor-craft network is reprinted from the Sabena website: 

HELICOPTER SERVICES

SABENA operated helicopter services from 21 August 1950 when it used Bell 47D aircraft on an experimental postal service between Brussels and extending domestically to cities like Antwerp, Liege and Turnhout. It was begun in co-operation with the Belgian Post Office.

The Bell 47s were replaced with the larger Sikorsky S.55 allowing the service to extend to internationally to Maastricht. This was the world's first international helicopter service.

SABENA intended using helicopters on an international rotary-wing passenger service as a feeder service for it's fixed-wing international/European services. This was started on 1 September 1953 using the Sikorsky S.55 aircraft, which could carry eight passengers.

SABENA flew international services with Sikorsky S.55 SABENA began international passenger services with the Sikorsky S.55

By October 1956 the service had new helicopters, the twelve-seat Sikorsky S.58 and SABENA's fleet of eight S.58 helicopters inauguated the service to Paris in 1957!

Sikorsky S.58 SABENA improved the helicopter services with eight Sikorsky S.58s

By 1960 this international passenger helicopter service from Brussels flew to Rotterdam, Antwerp, Lille, Eindhoven, Maastricht, Liege, Paris, Dortmund, Duisburg, Cologne and Bonn. It served Holland, France, Germany and Luxembourg internationally.

Sabena: Mexico City, Montreal, and New York aboard Caravelle Jets, c.1960s

 Flying to Mexico City in another era: here's an old Newspaper advertisement in a shipping circular, in which the Belgian airline Sabena boasts of "the best trips with the Latest Jets, Excellent Service, Luxury & Comfort To Europe" on board both Caravelle Jets and Boeing Jets, with the porpoise-nosed Caravelle shown. The three North American destinations shown: Montreal, New York, and Mexico City, correspond to this artifact posted several years ago, showing the airline's route system from Europe to Africa, the Near East in North America. 

Sabena: First flight from Conakry to Brussels

Although similar first-day covers announcing mid-century Sabena services to West Africa have been featured from the earliest days of Timetablist, this particular item hasn't been posted before: Sabena's 1959 service from Conakry to Brussels, with a special envelope featuring the famous Hôtel de Ville next to a West African mask, with the Boeing Jet Intercontinental. An alarming Guinean serpent stamp occupies the upper right.

Sabena: First Flight Brussels-Elizabethville, May 1953

An historic gem showing the Brussels-Rome-Athens-Cairo-Entebbe-Stanleyville-Elizabethville route's launch in May 1953, which was noted on Sabena's route map earlier this week without the Ugandan stop. The envelope, stamped at Ciampino Airport in Italy, was only posted as far as Lake Victoria's shores, in British East Africa.

Congo par Sabena, 1954

A domestic route map of sixty years ago looks much more impressive than the meagre network of Korongo today. Sabena offered services to no less than thirty airports in the vast Belgian colony, with what looks to be busy stations not only at the capital Leopoldville, and the principal regional administrative outposts at Elizabethville and Stanleyville, but throughout the interior of the enormous territory.

There were more than half a dozen routes via various way stations to the metropole in Brussels, including Tripoli, Casablanca, and Rome; all the routes from the capital connected at Kano, which must have been quite an operation in its own right.

In addition, regional African routes spanned the territorial border in all directions: from Leopoldville to Portuguese Luanda and Johannesburg, which also had a link to Elizabethville; from Albertville to Dar Es Salaam, from Libenge to Bangui, in French Equatorial Africa. Not especially the route to Entebbe and Nairobi, especially how Kigali lies within the realm of Belgian Central Africa at this time.

Sabena Network: c.1955

Post-war, pre-jet age Sabena still had an impressive reach, with a dense network in Europe spinning out from the low countries northward to Oslo and Stockholm and east to Prague and Vienna. A single westward push stopped at Shannon before destinations unspecified in North America.

Southward, planes reached the Mediterranean at Nice, and stretched further down to Lisbon where a vague connection to South America is suggested. More articulated is the operation at Rome, with planes splitting off for North Africa,  the first crossing the Sahara to stop at Kano before finally reaching the vast Belgian Congo at Leopoldville. A non-stop from Brussels reached into the upper reaches of the Congo to terminate at Elisabethville and Stanleyville, and a single lined continued all the way down to Johannesburg.

In the east, flights criss-crossed at Athens, only reaching Tel Aviv in the Near East, with another flight to Cairo, which turned down to also reach the eastern cities of the colony.

Sabena: The African Network, 1973

Continuing from the previous post, but focussing on Africa: Belgium has a particular, and outsized, colonial history in Africa, the 20th century era of which is intimately intertwined with the corporate history of Sabena. Here, near the height of the Belgian Airlines extent, the flag carrier flew to fifteen cities south of the Sahara. 

In west Africa, flights from Zaventem National Airport reached Dakar, Conakry, Abidjan, Niamey, Kano and Douala, with interlinking onward service to Monrovia and Lagos. Further into Central Africa lay Kinshasa, surely Sabena's most important African destination, linked from Niamey, Douala in Africa and Brussels and Athens in Europe. It is notable that no other Congolese city was served. 

Athens served as a supra-Mediterranean station for flights to East Africa: Nairobi and Entebbe connected non-stop from Greece, as did an ultra-long haul to Johannesburg. All three were also served non-stop from the home base. Interestingly, Uganda's main airport was also directly connected to Vienna. Kigali and Bujumbura, the capitals of Belgium's other central African former colonies, were only served from Nairobi, with Dar Es Salaam also linked in. 

Special thanks again to Flickr user caribb (Doug from Montreal) for allowing reuse under creative commons licensing. 

Sabena: Belgian World Airlines, 1973

Continuing with the vintage global route maps of European airlines from Flickr user Caribb's incredible collection, this (unfortunately somewhat blurry) photo shows Sabena's system in its “Belgian World Airlines” prime (compare to “Italy's World Airline” in the previous posts).

Five continents are linked, which is more than today's Brussels Airlines can boast, as that airline has only recently reached New York and Washington, but as with today's successor, the flag carrier of Belgium was mostly concerned with flights within Europe and Africa. As with this week's Alitalia posts, the latter African flights will be examined in detail in a subsequent post.

For now, this pink-and-grey sub polar projection shows just a few routes to Asia and the Americas, interspersed with far too much detail of "other airlines" connecting services, which overall makes Sabena's network look much more comprehensive and makes the map much too complicated to read easily.

In North America, only New York and Montreal are served, with the latter flight continuing on to Mexico City and terminating, quite unusually, at Guatemala City. Late-terminal Sabena would serve a number of U.S. cities from Boston to Miami in the 1990s before its ignominious 2001 demise.

Further into Latin America, the South American cone is connected on a Brussels-Dakar-Buenos Aires-Santiago service, which, while definitely not the only Dakar-South America operation in aviation history, may be one of the few situations in situation that West Africa had a scheduled link with Argentina, as most such flights link to Brazil.

Looking east, Sabena maintained sizable bases in both Vienna and Athens, with flights from both cities non-stop to East and Southern Africa as well as the Near East, such as Nicosia. Moving across the Asian landmass, flights first stopped in Tehran, then Bombay, Bangkok and Singapore were all interconnected, before the network curved up through Manila to reach Tokyo, from whence Sabena curved back over the pole to return to Brussels via Anchorage, Alaska.

The extensive African network will be detailed in the following post.

Special thanks, as always, to Flickr user Caribb (Doug from Montreal) for the generous creative commons licensing which permits reposting of his collection. 

Swissair: Zürich-Dakar-Bamako, 1996

A pair of fanciful envelopes celebrating the inaugural roundtrip of Swissair's Zürich-Dakar-Bamako and return service, in association with its then-sister carrier, Sabena. The post details the aircraft as a snub-nosed A310-322 wide body, although the only decor recalls the craft of Sahelien Africa. Swiss International Air Lines does not serve West Africa any longer, although Sabena's successor, Brussels Airlines, serves Dakar, Bamako, and a dozen other West African cities.

Sabena: Brussels-Niamey, 1987

Sabena's First Flight to Brussels from Niamey has been featured before, as the route was launched not only in 1987, as shown here, but also in 1968. The occasional nature of the service reflects the ebb and flow of African economic prosperity, specifically the price of uranium, when considering Niger.

This busy envelope isn't much for inspired graphics, even the lightly-impressed cancellation stamp lacks any illustration. Whoever sent the envelope along to Niamey was diligent enough to note that the SN435 flight was operated with an A310, which is helpful to record, although there is no mention if the service was direct, or stopped in North Africa or elsewhere on its trans-Saharan voyage.

Sabena: Le Premier Vol, Lagos-Bruxelles, 16 Déc 1965

Yesterday's post featured a true gem, an old reel of vintage Sabena adverts, showing the glorious age, with its glamorous features and conveniences, both aboard the jet fleet and when transiting at National Airport, Zaventem.

Here is a first-day cover of a similar era, and recalls two earlier Sabena first-day covers, which have both the contradictory image of a Boeing 707 aircraft over par Caravelle label, and does not mention any particular routing of the flight between the two distant cities.

Sabena: Service to Four Continents, c.1960

A still shot from this old Sabena advertisement, which briefly shows a map of the Belgian World Airlines reach at the time. Routes go to countries, designated by flag, not cities, and each destination gets a single direct line from Belgium, regardless of the true routing of the flights.

Certainly some of the cities can be accurately presumed (Abidjan, Mexico City, Bujumbura, Tehran, etc) while others (Lagos or Kano? Casablanca or Rabat? Oslo or Bergen? Perhaps both in such cases?) can only be guessed at.

The above is just single screen shot from a reel of Mid-Century promotional films, which are just incredible on so very many levels, and well-worth viewing for the plane spotting, the shots of JFK and Zaventem National Airports, and extinct mid-Century accents of the voice-overs alone:

Sabena landing Kisangani, 1959.

In 1959, this film was shot from aboard an unidentified aircraft of the Sabena fleet as it landed at Stanleyville, now known as Kisangani. Its also not specified whether this plane was flying from Leopoldville, the capital of the soon-to-be independent Congo, or directly from Brussels, or perhaps elsewhere.

Air Congo: Jet Service a Republique du Rwanda

A vintage poster celebrating Air Congo (a Sabena-backed entity) whose four-engined jets soared southward from Europe to Rwanda.

Sabena: Brussels-Douala

In the early 1970's, Brussels Zaventem Airport much have been quite busy, with so many jets departing for Africa. Here we see a first day cover from December 1972, a Sabena B707 to Douala. Not sure what the fellow to the left of the Hotel de Ville is doing.

Sabena: Brussels-Tunis, November 1965

A first day cover, nearly identical to the previous post, celebrating Sabena's jet launch to Tunis.

Sabena: Brussels-Abidjan, December 1965

A dynamic-first day cover, celebrating Sabena's jet service to Abidjan in December 1965. The mark says Caravelle but the model is decidedly a B707. Brussels Airlines still routes through Abidjan today, on a Brussels-Monrovia-Abidjan vv. triangulation.

Sabena: Brussels-Dar Es Salaam

A dual first day cover set from November 1966, celebrating Sabena's "Boeing Intercontinental" service to Dar Es Salaam, a city which unfortunately its progeny, Brussels Airlines, does not serve today.

Sabena: Brussels-Niamey, 1968

Sabena was very dedicated to Africa, as its successor, Brussels Airlines, is today. However, a few routes did not survive as long in Sabena's network, or were not carried on by Brussels Airlines. This route is one such example, to Niger on what appears to be a B727, which most surely would have made an intermediate stop somewhere in North Africa, such as Tunis. Air France is the only airline to connect Niger to Europe today.

Sabena: Brussels-Detroit

What surprise to find that Sabena reached the motor city in April 1980? Perhaps this was simply an extension of Toronto or Chicago routes; the service does not seem to have lasted long. In one of the most drastic alterations to the transatlantic scope of services, no Belgian-flagged carrier serves North America today, a big shift from pre-2001, when Sabena landed daily in a number of cities, including Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, and Cincinnati (the latter two a result of the link-up with Delta Air Lines). VG Airways was short-lived, and Brussels Airlines concentrates on Europe and Africa. Delta, American, United, Continental and USAirways are the only choices for US-Brussels routes. The custom envelope is lovely, with the Renaissance Center towers merging with the church steeple.