Sabena Flight Academy to the Saab Safir 91B, replaced in 1958 by the Cessna 310B and in 1981 by the Embraer Xingu. In 1991, the government gifted the "École d’aviation civile" to Sabena. It was first renamed Belgian Aviation School and then Sabena Air Training Center, and the school moved into a new building at Brussels National Airport. It was decided to carry out practical flight training in Phoenix in the USA because the weather in Arizona allows flights 365 days per year in a high and complex air traffic environment. Despite the bankruptcy of Sabena in 2001, the flying school continued in
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