Spike and Suzy and Suzy happen in real countries all over the world, with Belgium (their home country) as main focus for many stories. While in the early stories large distances were usually traveled using the fictitious "Gyronef", an experimental helicopter devised by professor Barabas, starting from the 1960s all air travel is provided by the Dutch national airline KLM, making it an early and prominent example of product placement in European comics. Vandersteen chose KLM over the Belgian national airline SABENA because of his friendship with Ron Winderink, PR manager at KLM. Willy Vandersteen created "Suske en Wiske", beginning publication in "De
Sabena that it had to buy jumbo jets for its prestige services, notably New York JFK and as of the mid-seventies, Chicago O'Hare. Sabena purchased only two first generation jumbo jets and it continued to fly the 707 into the late 1970s. In 1973, the Boeing 727s on the European network were replaced by Boeing 737-200s. The Douglas DC-10-30 entered service in 1974. In total, Sabena purchased five of these convertible (Passengers and/or freight) combi aircraft wide-body jets. In 1984 Airbus A310s were introduced on routes that had high passenger density. This aircraft type also introduced a modernisation of the 1973