An embargo and a trainer

In 1976 the United States, under the so-called Kennedy Amendment, cut off arms sales to Chile’s military government. The Chilean Air Force was left flying worn American trainers it could no longer easily repair, at a time of tension with Argentina and Peru. Its answer was to build an aircraft industry of its own. The air force’s maintenance wing became IndAer in 1980, and on 16 March 1984 it was reorganised as a separate state company, ENAER, with its first serious aircraft already in hand.

A Piper with an aerobatic wing

That aircraft was the T-35 Pillán, named after a spirit of Mapuche belief. It was developed for Chile by Piper in Florida, which took the fuselage of the PA-32R Saratoga and gave it a new centre section and a wing stressed for aerobatics. The first prototype flew at Lakeland on 6 March 1981. Piper supplied kits, ENAER assembled them near Santiago, and the first production aircraft reached the Air Force Academy in August 1985. Spain bought it as the E.26 Tamiz, assembled by CASA, and Paraguay, Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala followed.

Falcons from Spain

ENAER also learned on bigger machines. Chile bought the Spanish CASA C-101 jet trainer as the T-36 Halcón, with local assembly of part of the order, and then the light attack A-36 Halcón, of which the prototype came from Spain and the remaining 22 were assembled by ENAER. The company also upgraded Chile’s Mirage fighters as the Pantera and became a maintainer of F-16 and C-130 fleets for air forces across Latin America.

The club aircraft that never sold

Its first wholly Chilean design was less lucky. The Ñamcú, a cheap two-seater for flying clubs, flew in April 1989, but one of the four prototypes crashed fatally in February 1992 and the Chilean Air Force was not interested. A Dutch joint venture, Euro-ENAER, chased European certification through the 1990s while the promised price climbed from 70,000 to 160,000 US dollars. It finally certified the aircraft in 2001, could not raise production money, and went bankrupt the same year.

Pillán’s heir

More than 140 Pilláns were built between 1985 and 2014 and they flew more than 200,000 hours for the Chilean Air Force alone. Their successor is again an ENAER design. Launched as the Pillán II and renamed the T-40 Newen, it uses carbon fibre, a new wing and a digital cockpit. The prototype was shown at El Bosque on 25 November 2025 and formally presented at FIDAE in April 2026, with 33 ordered by the Chilean Air Force.

Fabrieken

• El Bosque plant · El Bosque Air Base, Santiago — Assembly, aerostructures and maintenance

Records en primeurs

• T-35 Pillán passed 200,000 flight hours with the Chilean Air Force