Loring’s workshop

In 1923 the civil engineer Jorge Loring set up the Talleres Loring at Carabanchel Alto in Madrid to build aircraft. Its early work included several of Juan de la Cierva’s first autogiros, among them the C.7 and C.12. In 1934 it became a public company, Aeronáutica Industrial S.A., and until 1936 it built Fokker reconnaissance aircraft and three Fokker F.VIIb-3m trimotors for Spanish Sahara, alongside Loring’s own designs and the González Gil-Pazó GP-1 trainer, of which only 40 of 100 ordered were built before the Civil War.

Wooden trainers for the air force

The war pushed production to Alicante. Back in Madrid in the 1940s, AISA built the HM-1 trainer series, about 200 in all, and German-designed gliders. In 1954 it bought the design house Iberavia, whose I-11 became the I-11B Peque, 192 built, and the tandem-seat I-115, about 200 of which trained Spanish Air Force pilots from 1956 to 1976. Its weight earned it the nickname Garrapata, the tick, for its reluctance to leave the ground.

Trucks, helicopters and Eurocopter

From the mid-1950s AISA’s main trade was overhauling helicopters, and from 1957 it also built AVIA three-wheelers, vans and minibuses. A home-grown autogiro, the GN, was abandoned after its only prototype crashed. CASA bought the company in the late 1990s; it passed into Eurocopter when CASA joined EADS, and was absorbed by Eurocopter España on 21 June 2004.

Factories

• Carabanchel Alto works · Madrid — Talleres Loring from 1923
• Cuatro Vientos · Madrid

People

• Jorge Loring Martínez · founder, civil engineer