The Senegalese news agency APS, writing in April 2026, calls Thiès the first air base in French West Africa (AOF), created in 1911, and says it was also used at the start of the Second World War for maritime surveillance missions. That is the agency’s account; no French or Senegalese archive record of the 1911 date was found for this page, and the claim sits alongside APS’s separate description of Camp Geille at Ouakam, founded in 1920, as one of France’s first air bases in Africa.

Thiès lies about 70 kilometres inland from Dakar, according to defenceWeb, a railway town that grew into a garrison city: today it is the seat of Military Zone 7 and of several national military schools. APS says the airfield passed to the newly formed Senegalese air force “dans les années 1965”, five years after independence. Exactly what flew from it between the colonial period and the 1980s is not documented in the sources checked.

The École de l’Armée de l’Air was created by decree on 2 May 1984, according to Le Soleil, and has lived at Thiès ever since; the base is now formally the Base-école de Thiès (BET). Its first fleet in the published record is French and light: SOCATA Rallyes, including the armed Rallye 235 Guerrier, one of which defenceWeb still listed at the school in 2020.

From 2006 France passed on TB 30 Epsilon trainers as its own air force retired them: two in 2006, four in 2014 and two more handed over in May 2019, with three more expected in 2021 to make ten, according to defenceWeb, which said the aircraft had trained about 15 pilots between 2014 and 2019. Wikipedia, citing FlightGlobal, counts six in service in 2025; the gap between deliveries and the count has not been explained. Le Soleil described a fleet in 2025 of Epsilons, Schweizer training helicopters, a helicopter simulator, aircraft simulators and drones, flying more than 1,000 hours a semester at about nine sorties a day, which made it one of the busiest military airfields in the country.

Thiès has trained more than Senegalese crews. In December 2020 defenceWeb reported seven Togolese pilots in training there, and General Philippe Lavigne, chief of staff of the French air force, visited on 13 November 2020 to see how the G5 Sahel states were building their air forces. In 2025 the Minister of the Armed Forces, General Birame Diop, praised the school’s civil-military training as an example of cooperation, Le Soleil reported.

Since 2022 the school has trained pilots and aircraft maintenance technicians for the national airline, Air Sénégal, according to the air force chief of staff in July 2024. Le Soleil reported in April 2025 that the first civilian class had produced 11 professional pilots, that the school held Senegalese and European approvals from ANACIM, OSAC and the French DGAC, and that it had worked with the École Polytechnique de Thiès since October 2015.

The school celebrated its fortieth anniversary at the base on 2 May 2024 with a static display, a flying demonstration and an exhibition on its history; General El Hadji Niang, the air force chief of staff, used the occasion to call for continued investment in infrastructure, programmes and people. On 21 December 2024 Le Soleil reported a first: civilians admitted to the non-flying specialities of administration, fire and rescue, and fuels, in a class of 77 trainee non-commissioned officers, seven of them women, under the school commander Colonel Ousmane Ngom.

In July 2025 Commandant Aminata Barro, a former maintenance chief, took over technical support and logistics at the base, according to Dakaractu. The base also shows itself to the town: on 4 April 2025, when Thiès hosted the 65th independence anniversary parade, two helicopters and three training aircraft from the school flew over the parade twice, APS reported. In July 2026 APS reported the 14th class of maintenance technicians joining the ranks.