Scibe Airlift

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Scibe Airlift
Scibe - Zaire Boeing 707
IATA code : ZM
ICAO code : SBZ
Call sign : SCIBE AIRLIFT
Founding: 1976
Operation stopped: 1998
Seat: Kinshasa , Democratic Republic of the CongoCongo Democratic RepublicDemocratic Republic of Congo 
Home airport : Ndjili Airport
Fleet size: 2
Aims: National and international
Scibe Airlift ceased operations in 1998. The information in italics refer to the last status before the end of operation.

Scibe Airlift (originally SBZ Cargo , later trading as Scibe Airlift Cargo Zaïre , Scibe-Zaïre and Scibe-Airlift Congo) was an airline based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that ceased operations in 1998. In addition to national scheduled flights, the company mainly carried out international freight transports.

history

A McDonnell Douglas DC-10 that Scibe Airlift used on scheduled flights to Brussels in 1992.

Scibe Airlift was founded in 1976 under the name SBZ Cargo ( S ociété B emba Z aïre ) by businessman Jeannot Bemba Saolona and members of the Mobutu family. President Mobutu also owned shares in the company (at least in the mid-1980s). Flight operations began on October 22, 1976 with a Vickers Viscount 880C . One month later, SBZ Cargo received another aircraft of this type. Initially, the company transported freight and people mainly on behalf of the government within Zaire . With a leased Lockheed L-100 Hercules , which the company received in November 1978, cargo flights to Europe began in 1979 for the first time. In the same year the airline was officially affiliated to the Scibe group of companies ( S ociété C ommerciale et I ndustrielle Be mba ) and renamed Scibe Airlift Cargo Zaïre .

In 1982 Scibe Airlift took over its first jet aircraft with a Boeing 727 , which was used on a newly established national route network and for freight transport. The company was able to expand its national route network quickly and, in 1985, carried more passengers for the first time than the state-owned airline Air Zaire . For further expansion, the company acquired five used Fokker 27 aircraft , which were taken over in 1986. At the end of the same year, the company regularly flew to 28 destinations in Zaire and also used two Boeing 707s on international cargo flights to Europe and the Middle East. In 1987 Jeannot Bemba Saolona gave his son Jean-Pierre Bemba the management of the Scibe Airlift . From the end of the 1980s, individual aircraft of the company were also briefly leased to other airlines, including the Belgian Sobelair and the German Aero Lloyd .

In 1992, the company sold two leased wide-body aircraft of the type McDonnell Douglas DC-10 a on passenger flights to Brussels, where they traffic rights and flight numbers of the state airline Air Zaire used. Because Scibe Airlift did not receive permanent landing rights from the Belgian government, the two machines were rented to the Dominican airline Taino Air in early 1993 . As a result of the political destabilization of the country, the company reduced the number of its national flight connections significantly from 1993 and sold all propeller-driven aircraft in the same year . In the period that followed, the company mainly carried out freight transports. In the summer of 1996, the company was fined $ 1.4 million in damages for its involvement in the Kinshasa air disaster .

The close relationship with the Mobutu regime made a decisive contribution to the economic success of Scibe Airlift . After the change of government in 1997, the company lost all privileges and became unprofitable. In the same year the Bemba family left the country and went into exile in Europe. The airline was renamed Scibe-Airlift Congo after the change of state name , but from mid-1997 it only operated a few flights. The company's last airworthy aircraft, a Boeing 707, was put into storage at Southend-on-Sea Airport in the UK on September 29, 1998 . In 2000 the airline Scibe Airlift was dissolved .

The same holding Scibe which among other investments in the airline Hewa Bora Airways had continued to exist and then set a single business aircraft of type 125 BAe for internal tasks one. The fact that the two companies have the same name probably led to the fact that the airline Scibe Airlift was listed on a no-fly list published by the EU in 2006 .

Illegal arms transport

During the civil war in Angola , Zaire's airports were used as reloading points for weapons and other military goods with the consent of the government. Many of these deliveries intended for UNITA were organized and carried out by the American secret service CIA . Also Scibe Airlift stood several times to be involved in suspicion at these transports. However, it was not until the beginning of 1997 that the company could be proven to be involved when the crew of a Scibe aircraft arriving from Brussels refused to pass customs control at Ndjili airport and Bulgarian weapons were subsequently found on board the aircraft. As early as the early 1990s, Jean-Pierre Bemba and a son Mobutus founded numerous bogus companies that acted as partner companies of Scibe Airlift and took over the onward transport of military goods to Angola with rented aircraft. One of these aircraft had an accident while taking off in 1996, causing the Kinshasa air disaster , one of the most serious accidents in aviation. After Mobutu's fall and the Bemba family's flight from the Congo, Scibe Airlift began flying more and more to Entebbe Airport in Uganda from 1997 , which was also suspected of being used as a weapons hub.

Incidents

  • On September 10, 1991 a Fokker 27 ( registration number : 9Q-CBE ) was damaged in a firefight in Uganda and then written off as a total loss.
  • On December 13, 1992, a Fokker 27 ( 9Q-CBH ) hit a mountain near the city of Goma . All 37 inmates were killed.
  • On January 18, 1994, a Learjet 24 ( 9Q-CBC ) crashed near Kinshasa due to a lack of fuel . The two pilots were killed.
  • On January 8, 1996, an Antonov An-32 ( RA-26222 ) of Russian Moscow Airways rented by Scibe Airlift had an accident while taking off from Kinshasa-N'Dolo airport . The machine rolled over the end of the train and raced into a market square. At least 299 people were killed in the accident (see main article: Kinshasa Air Disaster ).

fleet

Fleet at the end of operations

At the time of the cessation of operations in September 1998, the fleet consisted of a non-airworthy Boeing 727-100 (stored at Ndjili airport ) and a Boeing 707-320C.

Previously deployed aircraft

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Aero, edition 229, year 1987, p. 6392
  2. ^ Forbes, Nov. 18, 1985
  3. ↑ jp airline-fleets, Edition 77
  4. ↑ bsl-mlh-planes.net [1]
  5. ↑ jp airline-fleets international 79
  6. ↑ Cablegate: Death of Jeannot Bemba Saolana, 2009 [2]
  7. ↑ jp airline-fleets international, Edition 83
  8. ↑ Africa South of the Sahara 2003, 32nd Edition, p. 267
  9. ↑ jp airline-fleets international, Edition 86
  10. ↑ Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo désigné Vice-Président de la République Démocratique du Congo Archived copy ( Memento of the original of November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nekongo.org
  11. ↑ a b Boeing 707-329C (20200/828) [3]
  12. ↑ jp airline-fleets international, Edition 94/95
  13. ↑ The Forgotten Disaster in Zaire, William Henry, 2006 http://www.airliners.net/aviation-articles/read.main?id=90 ( Memento from January 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Democratic Republic of the Congo, Peter Hunziker, 2003, (PDF) [4]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.5 MB)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.peterhunziker.ch  
  15. ↑ jp airline-fleets international Edition 98/99
  16. ↑ jp airline-fleets international Edition 2001/02
  17. ↑ Air-Britain, Photographic Images Collection [5]
  18. ↑ US embassy cable, January 25, 2007 [6]
  19. ↑ European Union (EU), Black List 2006 [7]
  20. ↑ Flight International, December 13, 1989, p. 8 [8]
  21. ↑ Washington Post, March 21, 1997
  22. ↑ Johan Peleman, "The logistics of sanctions busting: the airborne component", page 302 ( PDF ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and Archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.iss.co.za
  23. ↑ Flight International, January 23, 1996, p. 8 [9]
  24. ^ The Arms Flyers. Commercial Aviation, Human Rights, and the Business of War and Arms, Peter Danssaert and Sergio Finardi, 2011 (PDF) Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked . Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 3.7 MB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.iansa.org
  25. ↑ Aviation Safety Network, September 10, 1991 [10]
  26. ↑ Aviation Safety Network, December 13, 1992 [11]
  27. ↑ Aviation Safety Network, January 18, 1994 [12]
  28. ↑ jp airline-fleets international, various issues