Twenty years ago, Sabena was declared bankrupt

That was twenty years ago, on 7 November 2001. Sabena was declared bankrupt. Flight SN690, an Airbus A340-311 registered OO-SCZ coming from Cotonou and Abidjan, was the last Sabena aircraft to land at Brussels on 7 November, with 266 passengers and 11 crew. End of history, completely unimaginable at the time for an airline that appeared as one of the flagships of the national economy and a legendary company in the world. Ten thousand workers then found themselves on the floor.

Sabena (Société Anonyme Belge d’Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne) was a venerable old lady of 78 years. An internationally renowned company, the largest employer with 10,000 workers, 11 million passengers in 2000, 107 destinations in 48 countries. That’s the positive business card.

But Sabena was also known for its losses almost every year. The lack of vision of the state, which regained control before the evil marriage with Swissair in 1995. A lack of capital, a hectic social life, a growing debt of two billion euros at the end. Especially after Swissair has undertaken to take the best, pumping subsidiaries and passengers, with a certain folly sometimes, as with the massive purchase of 34 Airbus aircraft, which put the balance sheet definitively in the red.

The restructuring plans did not change anything. The Swiss, highly indebted, were the first to plunge.

Bloodless, abandoned by the Belgian State which was tired to invest at loss, Sabena filed for bankruptcy on 6 November 2001. Judge Anne Spiritus d’Assesse, President of the Brussels Commercial Court, declared Sabena’s bankruptcy on 6 November at 18:30 and the Official State Gazette later published the judgment as dated 7 November.

The government then organised a social plan, a conversion cell with the Regions asked to “manage” what remains as the worst failure of all times.

A private company is reborn from the ashes, SN Brussels Airlines. Curatorship led by Christian Van Buggenhout still manages today the final remnants of the company: aircraft engines, hotels, real estate in Brussels and Congo (Hotel Memling in Kinshasa).

At the judicial level, on the Swiss side, all the managers were acquitted. On the Belgian side, under criminal law, the story is not over yet.

The name Sabena survives in the Sabena Flight Academy, the French maintenance company Sabena Technics and the Belgian one, Sabena Aerospace.