Sabena - What Went Wrong? 

Your reading of the SABENA complete name in French is hilarious.

The fall of a flag carrier is always a sad day for the country's citizens. In some countries, the national airline is equivalent to a national symbol like the flag or the national animal. It's sad that SABENA never recovered for the Belgian people.

Swissair had an important role in the bancrupcy but there are a few details also important to know why Sabena went into bancrupcy. Sabena had many problems in terms of sustainability. The few books i read about it, say that Sabena was chronicaly under capitalised. At the end of the bookyear (well not every bookyear) the Belgian state gave money to fill the pits, but not enough to grow. Because it was considdered a temporary intervention, and the fact that in Belgium we sometimes lack thinks like long term vision. Apart from that Sabena did tremendous investments during all her years of existance. A variaty of aircrafts were used, some aircrafts only used for short times. Fleet commoniality was hardly inexistant. for example in the ninteties Sabena, DAT and Sobelair (her two flying subsidiaries) flew the Boeing 747, the AVRO RJ85, the Boeing 737, the Airbus A320, the Airbus A330/340, Boeing 767, and someothers (often leased for short time). Sabena and all her subsidiaries had an enormous workforce and were sometimes deadly inefficiently organised (it was stated Sabena was an airline managed like an administration). Sabena was also forced by Swissair to give some of her activities to the Swissair subsidiaries. Causing hight costs for catering, cargo handling etc (whilst there was Sabena Catering, a top knotch service as I've heard, sabena Cargo etc.). Besides of that, the lucrative business class seats were often used in the last years by frequent flyers from Swissair with their points/miles whatever, so Sabena didn't earn a penny on them. The Sabena employees were paid verry verry well, and taxation in Belgium is high so the personel costs were also verry high. All together, Sabena had an employment force of arount 12000. Apart from that, in the period 1995 - 1999 loading factors were on average around 67%(1996 even didn't hit the 60% on average). Sabena paid sometimes unreasonable high leasing fees, had many connecting passengers, that all toghether with the Swiss whom took some iresponsable risks and didn't kept their word made a beautifull (yet not profitable) airline go down, all the way. It seems you only took the last 6 years to investigate 78 years.

Such A Bad Experience Never Again Thats the other acronym favoured by Michael O'leary

You forgot the hijack of the plane in his way to tel aviv

Both Swiss and Brussels Airlines are owned by Lufthansa.

The name 'Sabena' always makes me sad, no national carrier should fail, they ARE the country they come from.

So irs just like twa or pan am but less known?

Next time talk about Estonian Air! Probably the worst ever national airline...

They should simply call Brussels Airlines “ Belgian Air “.

that french accent

I flew from Johannesburg to Manchester in 1998 and back to Johannesburg in 2000 on Sabena and had a great flight there and a great flight home...friendly crew, free drinks and digestible food...I can`t say the same for British Airways that I used in 2003...a real shame Sabena went under, great value for very little money...

Please NEVER READ ANYTHING IN FRENCH AGAIN 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

NOT A SINGLE CENT of taxpayers $ to Virgin Airways. It's NOT a national carrier. It's a Billionaires gamble and should fail due to excessive leverage.

So so SAD

Did it really fail tho? I mean, I know it went bust and bankrupt, but the airline existed since when? 1926 till 2001? That's a bloody long time that is. I would say it's fairly successful. Most airline companies can't last that long. All companies go bust one day. Only a very small handful of companies have remained alive longer than 100 years, and statistically speaking, the chance of them being here in another 100 years is very slim. So basically by that definition 99% of companies are failures because they eventually go bust. I get what you meant, but considering how many decades SABENA saw under its name, I wouldn't really say it's a fail knowing it almost lasted a whole century

I always loved the Sabena logo and livery. They were ahead of its time. Luckily, Sabena lives on today through its successor Brussels Airlines that still uses Sabena's IATA code 'SN'. But it remains very unfortunate that a true legacy airline name as SABENA was lost....

Timely reporting, Simple Flying

I flew with them in JUNE 2001 to JFK. The onboard service was terrible.

Sabena sponsored the Best Cadet trophy at 346 (Tynemouth) Squadron Air Training Corps.

We never hat to give swiss fulltime control tay buy us way to mutch new planes while sabena have not that mutsh monny

Flew on a Sabina caravelle from Tehran to Brussels in the late sixties. Great markings and name.

Great video 0:24 so funny 🤣🤣

Nice french accent!

i gues i lose my with brussels airlanes in 2027

Rip Sabena

Extraordinary time capsule and a fountain of unusual unknown information about the history of a famous airline.

0:24 the pronousation xD

My ears.. 🙉

That certainly sounds like the result of a Belgian committee; why did it fail? Nobody gave it any more money. Why did it need so much money in the first place might've been a better question?

SABENA stands for Such A Bloody Experience Never Again LOL

They could have not bought an entire fleet of airbus when we had perfect boeings flying around to start with.. Thank you Suisse.

I’ll always remember the daily DC-10-30’s to KBOS back in the 80’s

Tack as oikeen Lil ellil on leva

Nice video !

S uch A B loody E xperience N ever A gain

Sabena gone belly up due to the 9-11 airline Financial collapse (Based on wikipedia) After an airline recession and the effects on the airline industry of the September 11 attacks in 2001, all airlines that flew across the Atlantic suffered.

I'm early yay

I am from Belgium/ love to brussel airlains

Damn the editing is sloppy

Great presentation i like

#early

I get the honor of saying first

With that network... it could have been Emirates when Emirates was flying 727s. But it was government-owned, and by the worst European government you could choose to be owned by; these were the guys who took 500-odd days to get a coalition together

Hi

Im from the Netherlands 👍