Air Zaïre the government. Part of the contract with Sabena saw the Belgian airline train Air Congo personnel for a six-year period, and by the end of 1962 Air Congo had 2,400 employees, of which some 1,100 were seconded from Sabena. By this time the airlines' destinations included Entebbe, Lagos, Nairobi, Ndola, Salisbury and Usumbura. Jet service to Brussels was inaugurated in March 1963 utilising a Boeing 707 which was leased from Sabena, and in April 1963 the airline joined the International Air Transport Association, becoming the 94th overall member. The airline signed an agreement with French airline Union des Transports Aériens
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