La Sabena 1923-2001: des origines au crash

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 2003 by Staniland, Martin

Guy Vanthemsche, La Sabena 19232001: des origines au crash, De Boeck, Brussels (2002), 352 pp., euro23.75.

Despite the phenomenal expansion of commercial aviation in Europe since 1945, good business and political histories of the industry, or of individual airlines, are few and far between. In particular, there are virtually no monographs on the major Continental carriers, with the major exception of Marc Dierikx's meticulous study of the Dutch airline KLM, Blauw in de lucht (1999), which, however still awaits a translator.

Guy Vanthemsche's excellent history of the Belgian flag carrier Sabena is therefore very welcome and peculiarly timely. Research for the book began in 1998, when Sabena was still profitable, but by the time the book was published the airline had gone bankrupt, following its major private shareholder, Swissair. While Vanthemsche discounts his epilogue on events after 1995 as lacking the documentation available for the previous seventy-two years, his account of the earlier period makes the story of the last few years all too intelligible. But it would be wrong to read the book to discover the causes of Sabena's eventual failure when it illuminates so many broader political and economic issues, both about state airlines and about the character of state-business relations in Belgium. This illumination is all the brighter and more authoritative because Vanthemsche has been able to draw on a wealth of documentation from both government archives and Sabena's own records.

What was typical and what atypical about Sabena as an example of that very slowly disappearing breed, the European flag carrier? In its origins, and in its subjection to the non-aeronautical interests of successive governments, it closely resembled many other flag carriers. It began as a creation of private enterprise - notably the Societe generale bank and its colonial affiliates - but quickly attracted (and needed) State support, which (as in many other cases) was provided because of its contribution to imperial logistics (i.e. the Congo) and its potential contributions to national security and a domestic aircraft industry. The latter two turned out to be nebulous: though Sabena was tied to a parent company (Sabca) with aspirations to match Fokker and other aircraft builders, the main effect of the relationship was to deny it use of advanced American designs such as the Douglas DC-3 which its more aggressive neighbour, KLM, was purchasing in substantial numbers and to great profit.

In its constitution Sabena differed from other European national carriers. While other airlines moved inexorably towards full nationalisation, Sabena was the object of an unusual public-private bargain, struck in 1923 and enduring until 1960, by which the Belgian state and the Belgian Congo each owned roughly 25 per cent of the airline's equity, the remainder being held by Belgian banks. Although it followed an established Belgian tradition of colonial enterprise built on a 'public-private partnership', Sabena was nevertheless (as Vanthemsche notes) 'a very odd creation: a private firm with a majority of public shareholders, but with private management . . . which could not function without major support from the State'. Neither group of shareholders was anxious to invest in the airline, which was chronically undercapitalised until the 1980s. Moreover, the unusual sharing of equity between Brussels and Leopoldville led to a crisis when the Congo became independent in 1960. Brussels suddenly faced the problem of having a quarter of the state airline's shares being held by a foreign government. It therefore bought four-fifths of the private-sector holding (in the face of opposition by the airline's management) to ensure Sabena's Belgian nationality, thus ensuring - somewhat late in the day - that it became a state-owned carrier.

Sabena's involvement in the Congo was more intense and enduring than that of Air France, BOAC or KLM in the French, British and Dutch colonies. Having concentrated its resources so heavily (and profitably) on the Ligne Belgique-Congo, by 1960 it had very few other long-haul routes to fall back on -partly because Belgian aviation diplomacy had been intensely protectionist and provoked other States to withhold new traffic rights. Worse still, Sabena continued to be involved in Congolese politics after 1960, with substantial revenue locked up in Congolese currency and hostage to the excruciating complexities of President Mobutu's relations with Belgium.

Under State control after 1960, Sabena fared no better than it had as a societe mixte. Each political party had its representatives in the airline's management, and the tensions between the Walloon and Flemish halves created further conflicts. (The senior management was predominantly French-speaking, while the lower-ranking personnel were mainly Flemish.) Communal tension also complicated the airline's increasingly urgent efforts to find a foreign partner: as a frustrated vice-president put it in 1988, 'if we choose Air France as a partner, the Flemish community won't agree, and if we choose KLM the French-speaking community will be against it'. In this respect, of course, Swissair was an acceptably multicultural partner.