How many of you remember Sabena, the defunct flag carrier of Belgium? Much to my surprise, Sabena lives on in Ft. Lauderdale.
Societé Anonyme Belge d’Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne or Sabena had a worldwide route network connecting Belgium and its African colonies from 1923 to 2001. Its U.S. route network at one point included Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, and New York. The company went under in 2001 due to prolonged labor strikes (are you listening Air France?) and a lack of financial infusion from 49.5% stakeholder Swissair (which also went under).
While waiting for my flight to Houston yesterday (which I ended up not taking due to a four hour delay, but that’s another story), I noticed the departure board also included codeshare flights.
United flights also showed Lufthansa flight numbers..and Sabena flight numbers.
What I find difficult to understand is that these monitors and the flight status display system itself seem far newer than the demise of Sabena in 2001.
How does this happen? Who loaded that image in?
I looked up these codeshares and indeed they are for Brussels Airlines, the successor to Sabena.
CONCLUSION
I never flew Sabena, but its ghost lives on in FLL. I have flown Brussels Airlines, though, and recommend it.
> Read More: Brussels Airlines A330 Business Class Review (Brussels to New York JFK)
Unless the image assets got migrated “as is” from any previous system and nobody bothered to update them, I can also see this being a human error – someone saw SN a chose a wrong file. This likely would’ve been caught faster at JFK or CLT. Funny, though.
Same thing happens with Swissair instead of Swiss. Or people referring to USAir instead of US Airways (back then)
Not sure what is so difficult about it. It’s not like you would see the Continental logo on any monitors in Europe.