Oh, you want some historic dirty laundry for the Belgian style airline management...? Here we go...
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1977... I am back with PanAm, flying F/O 707... Scheduling offers me a long term assignment based BRU with one of our planes (N705PA) - I accept as my mother lives in Brussels. Airplane is leased ACMI to Sobelair. Airplane is painted in Sabena/Sobelair colors, gets Belgian registry OO-SJP... We flew mostly from Brusssels to Kinshasa and Luanda. All was fine...
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A given time, Sabena is on strike... cannot recall, but was flight crews and/or cabin crews.
Easy, Sabena painted titles "Sabena" on the 707, rest of livery was common to Sabena/Sobelair anyway.
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Here is the "dirty laundry". Sabena management heads were also the "owners" of Sobelair. So, any time Sabena was on strike, fine, Sobelair was chartered to operate the flights. The longer the strike, days, weeks, the richer the heads of Sobelair got in their Swiss or Luxembourg bank accounts.
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Oh, but we had a problem for flight attendants, being on strike, none available...
Solution, they went through the airport facilities, and took Sabena catering employees, even selected some airport restaurant servers staff, 10 minutes cabin training "here - how you open a 707 door" - and on our way to Kinshasa...
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I am certain SNBA continues the tradition with other dirty laundry.
I am available as director of operations, want to get rich.
Pass the Euros under the table please. Dank U wel, merci...
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Happy contrails