Gliders and Paulistinhas

José Carlos de Barros Neiva founded the Sociedade Construtora Aeronáutica Neiva in Rio de Janeiro on 12 October 1954. The firm soon moved to Botucatu, in the interior of São Paulo state, where it built Monitor gliders and, from 1956, the Paulistinha, the high-wing trainer whose rights it bought from the Companhia Aeronáutica Paulista. Neiva tried to turn it into a crop sprayer, but it could not compete with purpose-built imports. More successful was the Regente, a four-seat high-wing utility aircraft first flown on 7 September 1961; the air force took 80 as the U-42 and 40 of an observation version, the L-42.

The Universal

Neiva’s best-known design came from the engineer Joseph Kovács. The N621 Universal, a side-by-side, all-metal trainer with retractable undercarriage, was designed in 1963 to replace the T-6 Texan and Fokker S-11 and first flew on 29 April 1966. The Brazilian Air Force ordered 150 as the T-25, and 28 more in 1978; it also served as a counter-insurgency aircraft and still trains cadets at the Air Force Academy. Ten went to the Chilean Army, and second-hand T-25s later reached Paraguay and Bolivia.

Embraer’s farm

Financial trouble pushed Neiva into partnership with the state-owned Embraer in 1975, building Piper designs under licence, and in 1980 Embraer bought it outright. Neiva became the home of the Ipanema crop sprayer and, from 1999, of EMB 120 Brasilia production. On 19 October 2004 an ethanol-powered Ipanema was certified, the first ethanol-powered fixed-wing production aircraft. In 2006 Neiva was fully incorporated into Embraer as its Botucatu unit; the 1,700th Ipanema was delivered there in November 2025.

Factories

• Botucatu works · Botucatu, São Paulo, near Tancredo de Almeida Neves airport — Now Embraer’s Botucatu unit

People

• José Carlos de Barros Neiva · founder
• Joseph Kovács · designer — Designed the T-25 Universal

Records and firsts

• Ipanema: first ethanol-powered fixed-wing production aircraft, certified 19 October 2004