SNETA 7 of SNETA's 23 airplanes. By 1 June 1922, enough information was gathered and all experimental flights were suspended. This cleared the way to start up a real Belgian commercial operator, SABENA, which came into being on 23 May 1923 and into which SNETA merged. SNETA The Syndicat national d'Etude des Transports Aériens ("National Union of Study of Aerial Transport"), known by its acronym SNETA, was a Belgian airline which operated from 1919 to 1923 in order to pioneer commercial aviation in Belgium. In 1923 it ceased operations and merged into the newly founded national carrier SABENA. The company was
Sabena Flight 503 communication was cut off. The aircraft had crashed somewhere in the mountains of Rieti, Italy North-East of Rome and was now missing. Sabena itself got notified about the missing aircraft that same night at 23:15 but would not make an official statement until the morning of the following day. The airplane had crashed somewhere in the mountains of Rieti, Italy North East of Rome which were known for being difficult to access and also lay in a nature reserve where wolves roamed. The Italians immediately started a search and rescue mission to locate the missing aircraft and rescue its occupants.