Sabena Flight 571 of the Air Force's long-range operations. Captain Levy, a Royal Air Force veteran who took part in strategic bombing missions over Germany during World War II and also in the Berlin airlift, had joined Sabena in 1952. He retired in 1982 and died of a heart attack, at a hospital near his home in Dover on 1 August 2010. The hijacking took place on his 50th birthday. Sabena Flight 571 Sabena Flight 571 was a scheduled passenger flight from Brussels to Lod via Vienna operated by the Belgian national airline, Sabena. On 8 May 1972 a Boeing 707 passenger aircraft
Association of European Airlines operated over 8,000 flights a day, serving 530 destinations in 140 countries, with a global turnover of €100 billion. AEA traces its history back to 1952, when the Presidents of Air France, KLM, Sabena and Swissair formed a joint study group, shortly afterwards expanded with the addition of BEA (a forerunner of British Airways) and SAS. In February 1954, the Air Research Bureau was established on a permanent basis, in Brussels. The name was subsequently changed to the European Airlines Research Bureau and - in 1973 - the AEA. Shortly after the ARB was established, the 1954 Strasbourg Conference on