Did you know that Belgium has been flying to Africa for 100 years?

On 12 February 1925, aviators Edmond Thieffry, Léopold Roger and Joseph De Bruycker took off from Melsbroek, an airport to the Northeast of Brussels, to arrive at Léopoldville (present-day Kinshasa) a mere 51 days later.

The plane, Princesse Marie-José, made history along with the three gentlemen flying for the Belgian Corporation for the Exploitation of Aerial Navigation (better known as Sabena): it was the first time that anyone had successfully crossed the Sahara by airplane. As such, it was the beginning of a long aeronautical connection between Belgium and Africa, where the successor of Sabena, Brussels Airlines, still operates on a daily basis.

While the journey can be completed comfortably nowadays in less than a day (8 hours if you’re lucky), it was riddled with peril back in the first half of the 20^th century. The first expedition, undertaken in a Handley Page W8F – a trimotor propeller plane -- had to stop twice along the way.

The adventurous Belgians had to deal with treacherous weather, numerous technical problems and, well, 8,000 kilometres is a tremendous distance to cover. Keep in mind that aviation was still a relatively new discipline, as the Wright brothers made their first aeroplane at the beginning of the 20^th century.

Technological advances have come a long way since then, and such flights connect the world like never before.

Did you know that the initial flight from Brussels to Léopoldville was commemorated with a special postal stamp? A lick of Belgian success for the stamp aficionado, perhaps.