SABCA S.XII SABCA S.XII The S.A.B.C.A. S.XII or S.A.B.C.A S.12 was a four-passenger light transport aircraft with three engines and a high wing, built in Belgium early in the 1930s. The SABCA S.XII (or S.12) was a response to a July 1930 Belgian government call and funding for an all-Belgian multi-engine aircraft able to carry a useful load of between . This was prompted by the purchase that summer by the national airline, SABENA, of four Westland Wessex trimotors. Speed, range and cabin minimum dimensions were specified, a first flight before October 1930 was required and two examples were to be built.
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