22-Jun, 10pm
History of Brussels airport :
On 4 August 1914 the German troops invaded Belgium. Their search for a suitable location to build an airship hangar brought them to a plain on the territory of Haren and Evere. In February 1915 the Berlin-based company Arthur Müller Ballonhallenbau finished the construction of a zeppelin hangar. On 7 June 1915 Flight Sub-Lieutenant J.S. Mills bombed the hangar and destroyed the LZ 38 airship that had been forced to return to the airfield with technical problems. The zeppelin hangar that was partly consumed by fire was repaired within two months, but it would never again be used to shelter the vulnerable airships. After the armistice of 11 November 1918 the Belgian military started to use the airfield and the remaining infrastructure. The zeppelin hangar that was not pulled down until 1923 was used to park the aircraft the Germans had left behind. A few of these aircraft would later be used to take civilians up on their first flight from Haren.
From the earliest days the Belgian royal house took a keen interest in aviation. On 31 March 1919 King Albert I signed the memorandum of association of SNETA (Syndicat National pour l'Etude des Transports Aériens), the predecessor of Sabena (Société Anonyme Belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne), the Belgian national airline that was created on 23 May 1923. A week after its creation, SNETA set up a test flight that would carry two passengers from Brussels to London, and back to Evere via Paris in a former German bomber. The whole flight took seven and a half hours, the time we need today to fly from Brussels to New York. Little by little scheduled services were organised between Brussels and the British and French capitals. The military tolerated the civil aviation activities on its airfield. The military part of the airfield was referred to as Evere, whereas all civil activities took place on the territory of Haren.
