The story begins with a law. On 14 May 1914 President Manuel de Arriaga signed the act that created the Escola Aeronáutica Militar, the product of lobbying by the Aero Club de Portugal. The school opened in 1915 on the Tagus flats at Vila Nova da Rainha, and awarded its first pilot brevets in May 1917. In September 1917 Major Cifka Duarte and Carlos Beja crashed near Cartaxo, an accident recorded in the school’s later history.

By late 1919 the Army had decided on what the historian Pedro Gonçalves Ventura calls a “radical mudança de orientação para Sintra”. The school moved on 5 February 1920 to the Granja do Marquês, a farm estate below the Serra de Sintra, and its first training flight there took place on 5 November 1920. The land itself was only expropriated in 1924, by Decree 6629, from its private owner. A 1927 visitor from Ilustração Portuguesa found an “ambiente antigo, absolutamente fidalgo”.

The school’s early record was patchy. Ventura’s figures show 4,925 flying hours and four accidents in 1927, then 19 accidents in 1928 for only 345 more hours, and between 1927 and 1934 only one pilot course was run. The institution changed its name several times before the Air Force’s own history says it became Base Aérea N.º 1 in October 1939; the Academy’s history dates the creation of the Sintra air base to December 1937, so the two official accounts differ by almost two years.

During the Second World War Sintra was Portugal’s training airfield. Its School Group flew Avro 626s and de Havilland Tiger Moths, and the base also housed an independent assault flight with Italian Breda Ba.65 ground-attack aircraft, a type that had fought in the Spanish Civil War. Ventura writes that ten of them were assembled at Sintra in 1938; English-language references date the purchase to November 1939, so the arrival is best given as 1938–1939.

The Bredas barely flew. On 15 February 1941 a violent storm swept Portugal and badly damaged the hangar at Sintra in which they were kept, together with the aircraft inside. Repairs failed and the machines were scrapped. Observador’s review of Ventura’s history puts it bluntly: “Foi o fim infeliz de uma Esquadrilha que pouco havia voado no seu período de existência” — the unhappy end of a flight that had hardly flown.

Peace and NATO changed the scale of the place. From 1951 United States military aid brought more than 200 North American T-6s to Sintra, and in the same year the first de Havilland Chipmunks entered service. When the army and navy air arms were merged into the independent Portuguese Air Force in 1952, the airfield became Base Aérea N.º 1, Sintra, the new service’s military school of aeronautics, a training role it has never really left.

Sintra entered the jet age with the Cessna T-37C. The first twelve arrived as kits in December 1962 and were assembled by OGMA at Alverca in February 1963; further batches of six followed in March 1964, June 1964 and January 1965, for 30 in all. They equipped the Esquadra de Instrução Básica de Pilotagem N.º 2, the “Panchos”, with two flights nicknamed “Feras” and “Águias”. The Air Force marked the squadron’s 50th anniversary at Sintra on 14 December 2013.

The Panchos also invented Portuguese formation aerobatics. A team formed in 1964 for a display at Alverca was stood down that year after a fatal training accident, reformed in 1965, became the “Diabos Vermelhos” in 1969 and was grounded in 1970 as the Colonial War absorbed resources. After a brief revival in 1973 for the Santos-Dumont centenary, the Asas de Portugal were formally created in 1977, the year the unit was renumbered Esquadra 102.

Sources disagree about where the T-37s lived. The English Wikipedia places the squadron at Sintra from 1964 to 1977 and then at Beja until 1992, while one enthusiast history names Ota as the main instruction base; the Air Force itself says only that Esquadra 102 trained generations of pilots at BA1. The type’s last official flight was on 8 August 1992. Its record was costly: nine pilots died in T-37 accidents between 1963 and 1992, and the fallen are remembered at the base monument.

In the Air Force’s own centenary series, the 1960s and 1970s at Sintra were about more than pilots. An Escola de Estudos da Força Aérea was set up in 1966, and in 1975 a reconnaissance and resource-survey squadron received CASA C-212 Aviocars for mapping and aerial photography. The base history says Aviocar photographic missions continued from Sintra until 2007; the local press lists Esquadras 401 and 502, both Aviocar units, among the base’s past squadrons.

In 1989 Esquadra 101 “Roncos” moved from Ota to Sintra and exchanged its Chipmunks for the French Socata TB-30 Epsilon; the Air Force says 18 were delivered, and a British enthusiast account dates the first arrivals to 1987. In 1990 Esquadra 701 also transferred from Ota. The 1993 restructuring then sent the Epsilons south to Beja, with the English Wikipedia giving 15 June 1993.

The shuffle continued. According to the Observador review of Ventura’s centenary history, from 1993 BA1 was to concern itself exclusively with operational missions. Esquadra 101 came back to Sintra in 2009, and on 1 July 2020 moved to Beja once more, where it now flies the Epsilon alongside the new A-29N Super Tucano. Sintra kept the first rung of the ladder: selection flying on gliders and Chipmunks.

The Academia da Força Aérea was created by Decree-Law 27/78 of 27 January 1978 and opened on 1 February, separating the training of career officers from the Army’s Military Academy. At first it took only third-year aeronautics students; engineering degrees followed in 1991–1992, Bologna master’s degrees from 2006–2007, and the technical college ESTMA was absorbed in 2008. The English Wikipedia gives 184 students and 46 academic staff.

Its flying arm is Esquadra 802 “Águias”, whose mission is to fly the selection and curricular flights of pilot students, the elementary pilot course, gliding and glider-instructor training. It flies Schleicher ASK 21 two-seat gliders; the Portuguese Wikipedia records that the older Let L-23 Super Blaniks were retired in 2014. The squadron belongs to the Academy rather than to the base command, and the Air Force page gives no formation date. A British report from 2026 counted three ASK 21s in the training pipeline.

The powered half of the squadron is a living museum piece. In 1989, as the Chipmunks left Ota, seven were handed to the Academy for glider towing and fitted with 180 hp Lycoming engines; the avionics were updated in 2000. Six remain in use. In May 2026 three flew from Sintra to Duxford for the type’s 80th anniversary, and on 20 September 2026 the base held an open day for 75 years of Portuguese Chipmunks. A British report says seven Tecnam P-Mentors are on order to replace them; the Air Force has not confirmed a date.

The Museu do Ar was created by decree in 1968 and opened at Alverca on 1 July 1971. By the 2000s it had outgrown its hangar, and in December 2009 a new 3,500 square metre hall opened at Sintra, timed for the centenary of Portuguese aviation. A second phase in three restored hangars from the 1920s, about 3,000 square metres, followed in 2011. The collection includes a Spitfire, F-86F Sabres, Fiat G.91s, a Hurricane and a P-3P Orion.

Sintra is also the Air Force’s shop window. On 7 September 2025 about 12,500 people visited the open base for the service’s 73rd anniversary; 480 of them took familiarisation flights in a C-130H, and a pair of F-16Ms displayed overhead. Visitors could climb the control tower and try the simulators of the helicopter training centre. The base anniversary is also a graduation day: on 22 May 2014 the Chief of the Air Staff, General José António de Magalhães Araújo Pinheiro, presided over the 94th, at which newly qualified pilot-aviators received their brevets.

The newest role is multinational. In July 2020 the European Defence Agency announced that its Multinational Helicopter Training Centre would settle at Sintra, which Portugal’s defence minister described as the future rotary-wing hub of the Air Force. An EDA mission simulator was inaugurated there on 26 May 2021, and a technical arrangement was signed on 28 June 2022. The EDA’s target for initial operational capability slipped from the end of 2022 to October 2023 and then the end of 2023; its figures for participants range from 14 to 15 nations.