Rodolphe Marchais leasing and aircraft maintenance activities, through its subsidiaries, TAT leasing and Sabena technics. In a decade, TAT Group increased its maintenance activity and took part in a concentration movement in a fragmented market: it acquired successively AOM Industries in 2000, Sabena technics (at the time maintenance subsidiary of the Belgian National Airline) in 2005 and EADS Sogerma Services as well as EADS Barfield in 2007, making his subsidiary, Sabena technics, the world’s third largest independent MRO. Today, Sabena technics has all the necessary skills and agreements to perform maintenance on a large range of narrow and wide-body aircraft (Airbus, Boeing,
Sabena Flight 503 communication was cut off. The aircraft had crashed somewhere in the mountains of Rieti, Italy North-East of Rome and was now missing. Sabena itself got notified about the missing aircraft that same night at 23:15 but would not make an official statement until the morning of the following day. The airplane had crashed somewhere in the mountains of Rieti, Italy North East of Rome which were known for being difficult to access and also lay in a nature reserve where wolves roamed. The Italians immediately started a search and rescue mission to locate the missing aircraft and rescue its occupants.