Sabena of the company, he stopped the illegal payments. "Terzake" went on to state that this might explain why the Belgian board members remained quiet when it became apparent Swissair was exploiting Sabena and eventually drove the company into bankruptcy. On December 14, 2007, Georges Jaspis, a former World War II pilot in No. 609 Squadron RAF and the Sabena pilot with the most flying hours (27,000) died. Captain Jaspis was the pilot who inaugurated the Manchester to New York service in October 1953 and who collected the first Sabena Boeing 707 and 747. He had escaped Belgium during the war
Alcazar (airline) States started negotiating open skies agreements with the European Union (EU), which would allow any European airline to fly from any airport in their home country to any airport in the US, and similarly any US airline to fly from any US airport to any European airport. In the 1980s, SAS, Swissair, Austrian Airlines and Finnair had attempted to establish European Quality Alliance (EQA). In addition to codesharing and joint marketing, the alliance was largely based around technical issues and using the EQA brand as a "seal of quality". These had largely stranded because Finnair felt that SAS goal was