Air Zaïre Air Zaïre Air Zaïre was the national airline of Zaire. Its head office was located on the grounds of N'djili Airport in Kinshasa. "Air Congo" was originally formed in June 1961 as the national airline of the Congolese Republic, with Sabena providing both technical assistance and equipment. Initially, the Congo government had a 65% participation in the airline, Sabena had a 30% holding, and Air Brousse and Sobelair held the balance. Services to Belgium were inaugurated in early 1963, linking Léopoldville with Brussels via Rome, using Boeing 707 equipment operated by Sabena on behalf of the carrier. By 1964 the
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