1948 Sabena DC-4 Crash 1948 Sabena DC-4 Crash The 1948 Sabena DC-4 Crash was the crash of a Douglas DC-4-1009 of the Belgian airline Sabena, 27 km South of Libenge, Congo (Democratic Republic) on 12 May 1948. It was the deadliest accident for Sabena at the time and the second of three deadly Sabena crashes in 1948. It was also the deadliest in Belgian Congo before the country's independence in 1960, of the 32 people on board 31 were killed, leaving only 1 survivor. The DC-4-1009 involved was built in 1946 and bought new from Douglas with serial number 42932 and registration "OO-CBE" and
Sabena from Seaboard World Airlines, using them mainly on transatlantic routes. In the same period, there were experiments with helicopter passenger service using Sikorsky S-58 aircraft from Brussels to Antwerp, Rotterdam, Eindhoven and the Paris heliport at Issy-les-Moulineaux. 1960 saw the introduction of the Boeing 707-320 intercontinental jet for trans-Atlantic flights to New York. SABENA was mainland Europe's first airline to operate a jet across the Atlantic (BOAC had been flying jet transatlantic services using the de Havilland Comet 4 since 4 October 1958). One of Sabena's aircraft became the first Boeing 707 to crash while in commercial service when Flight