Sabena Flight 571 Sabena Flight 571 Sabena Flight 571 was a scheduled passenger flight from Brussels to Lod via Vienna operated by the Belgian national airline, Sabena. On 8 May 1972 a Boeing 707 passenger aircraft operating that service, captained by British pilot Reginald Levy, DFC, was hijacked by four members of the Black September Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group. Following their instructions, Captain Levy landed the plane at Lod Airport (later Ben Gurion International Airport). The attack, planned by Ali Hassan Salameh, was carried out by a group of two men and two women who pretended to be two couples: the group’s
Air Zaïre other funds earned by Sabena in the country. Foreign ownership of the airline was eliminated at the same time, with the Congolese government holding a seventy percent share, the "Institut National Securite Sociale" holding eight percent, and local Congolese concerns holding the remainder. At the time, the fleet comprised two Douglas DC-6s, eight DC-4s, eleven DC-3s, two Curtiss C-46s, three Beech 18s, five Beech Barons, one Piper PA-23 Aztec and one Cessna 310. In 1967 the airline ordered two Sud Aviation Caravelles for delivery in October 1967 and the summer of 1968, and on 12 May 1967 a BAC One