Sabena To Curtail Service Wednesday

The Belgian national airline Sabena will go into liquidation on Wednesday, according to reliable news reports. Sabena has been struggling ever since Swissair, which owns 49.5 percent of its equity, reneged on a $199 million cash payment last month following its own struggle for financial survival.

Belgian travel managers told BTN last week that they were pulling all their travelers off Sabena flights after learning of the carrier's likely demise. Sabena last week also announced that it was to suspend transatlantic flights this week. Although few corporations are likely to see passengers stranded, those who had retrospective route deals with the airline stand to lose tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars in rebates they may well never see.
It is thought that part of the short-haul network will be salvaged through Sabena's subsidiary Delta Air Transport, possibly through a merger with Sir Richard Branson's small low-cost airline Virgin Express, which is based in Brussels. Sabena flies to 45 European cities from Brussels and Virgin Express to eight. British Airways also is believed to have been in talks about resurrecting part of the long-haul network.

Sabena would not comment today on its future, but Joel Gans of the Belgian Cockpit Association, which represents Sabena pilots, said: "Management confirmed to us that Sabena is inescapably headed for bankruptcy."