Sabena airliners which were augmented and later replaced by Douglas DC-6Bs. The DC-4s also restarted the airline's traditional route to the Belgian Congo. Sabena was the first airline to introduce transatlantic schedules from the north of England, when one of its DC-6Bs inaugurated the Brussels-Manchester-New York route on 28 October 1953. The Convair 240 was introduced in 1949 to partially replace the DC-3s that until then had flown most European services. As of 1956, improved Convair 440 "Metropolitan" twins began replacing the Convair 240 twins and were used successfully well into the 1960s between European regional destinations. In 1957, the long-range
TAT European Airlines TAT European Airlines Transport Aérien Transrégional was a French regional airline with its head office on the grounds of Tours Val de Loire Airport in Tours. It was formed in 1968 as Touraine Air Transport (TAT) by M. Marchais. Air France acquired a minority stake in the airline in 1989. Between 1993 and 1996 the company was gradually taken over by British Airways. It subsequently merged with Air Liberté. The merged entity was sold on to the SAir Group in 2001, which in turn merged Air Liberté with AOM becoming the renamed "" continuing the heritage of TAT until the