Beja was not built because Portugal needed another air base. It was built because West Germany needed room. The Air Force’s own history says Base Aérea N.º 11 was created by Portaria 20856 of 21 October 1964, a date the base still keeps as its anniversary, to meet bilateral agreements that gave the German Air Force a place for operational training away from the crowded, cloudy skies of central Europe. The command and services began work in 1967, the infrastructure was finished in 1968, and a residential district of 330 homes was built on the south-west edge of Beja.

The Air Force records two Luftwaffe F-104 squadrons at Beja from 1970 until 1973, when a reorganisation in Germany took them home. German sources, used here only as a finding aid, tell a longer story: a training command formed at Köln-Wahn on 1 April 1963, moved to Beja in 1965 and flew Fiat G.91s until 18 Alpha Jets replaced them in July 1980. Both versions agree that Beja also served as a support airfield, and the Air Force notes that Lufthansa and TAP used it for crew training.

The Luso-German agreement of 16 August 1979 brought a permanent Alpha Jet squadron for operational training, including live firing on the Alcochete range across the Tagus. It lasted until German reunification and the cuts that followed. The agreement was not renewed in 1993; the German command was stood down on 16 December 1993 and formally dissolved on 31 March 1994. As compensation Portugal asked for, and received free of charge, 50 surplus Alpha Jets, which shaped Beja’s next 25 years.

The permanent Portuguese presence began in January 1987, when Esquadra 103 “Caracóis” moved in from Monte Real with the Northrop T-38A Talon it had flown since July 1980. The Air Force says the squadron came from Monte Real; English Wikipedia says Montijo, and is wrong on the Air Force’s own record. The T-38s were gone by June 1993, and on 6 October 1993 the squadron began flying the ex-German Alpha Jet, a type that also equipped the attack squadron Esquadra 301 “Jaguares” at Beja.

Of the 50 Alpha Jets, Tecnologia & Defesa reports that about 40 were meant to fly and ten were kept for spares. Esquadra 301 flew them in the ground-attack role until 2005, when it moved to Monte Real and converted to the F-16. Esquadra 103 carried on as the advanced jet school. Totals differ slightly by source: Fliegerweb gives 53,000 hours and 170 jet pilots trained, Tecnologia & Defesa more than 50,000 hours, and the Air Force more than 100,000 hours for the squadron across all its types.

The squadron also restored Portuguese display flying. In 2001 it formed an Alpha Jet pair, the Parelha da Cruz de Cristo, which became the Asas de Portugal in 2005 and was deactivated in 2010. The last Alpha Jets were retired in January 2018; the Air Force gives 13 January, Fliegerweb 18 January. Advanced jet training moved abroad, and Esquadra 103 was left, in the Air Force’s words, awaiting new aircraft.

The German departure made space, and the Air Force filled it quickly. On 16 November 1993 the Alouette III squadron Esquadra 552 “Zangões” moved from Tancos, bringing transport, tactical support, flight instruction and coastal rescue to Beja. Between February 2000 and July 2002 it sent four Alouettes to the UN mission in East Timor, where they flew 2,700 hours and carried more than 10,000 passengers and 131 wounded. From 2004 to 2010 the squadron also flew the Rotores de Portugal helicopter display team.

The first AgustaWestland AW119 Mk II Koala arrived on 16 February 2019. The Alouette III flew its last Portuguese sortie on 17 June 2020, after what the Air Force counts as more than 300,000 hours in 57 years. The Koala adds floats, a rescue winch and a 1,400 kg underslung load, including a bucket for fighting rural fires. It seats seven passengers besides the pilot, and the squadron still flies tactical transport, training and rescue.

Basic pilot training has moved back and forth. Esquadra 101 “Roncos”, which bought 18 Socata TB-30 Epsilons in 1989, was at Beja from 1993, went to Sintra in 2009 and returned on 1 July 2020. It is now receiving the Embraer A-29N Super Tucano, which will take over both the training role and the light-attack role that left Beja with the Alpha Jets in 2005.

Esquadra 601 “Lobos” was formed in March 1986 at Montijo to patrol the sea and hunt submarines. Its first P-3P, one of six ex-Australian P-3Bs rebuilt for Portugal, arrived on 7 August 1988. Under Operation Sharp Guard in the Adriatic, from 1992 to 1996, the squadron flew 576 missions and 3,712 hours. It moved to Beja on 19 February 2008, giving the Alentejo base a maritime role for the first time.

The P-3Ps were replaced by five ex-Dutch P-3C CUP+ aircraft. The first arrived in August 2010 and the P-3P flew its last operational sortie on 13 October 2011, after more than 25,000 hours. The new aircraft went straight to the Indian Ocean: 40 missions and more than 320 hours on the EU’s Operation Atalanta from the Seychelles in 2010, then 30 missions and 245 hours on NATO’s Ocean Shield in 2011, which the squadron calls its baptism of fire.

In September 2023 Portugal agreed to buy six ex-German Navy P-3Cs, with mid-life upgrade kits, spares, test equipment and simulators. The first landed at Beja at 14:20 on 9 February 2024. It is a neat historical loop: the base Germany built for its own training now receives German surplus aircraft once more, as it did with the Alpha Jets in 1993. How many of the six will fly, and how many will be used for spares, has not been published.

Beja is where the Air Force puts its newest aircraft. Esquadra 506 “Rinocerontes” was created on 20 May 2023 by order 39/2023 of the Chief of the Air Staff, to fly the Embraer KC-390 on transport, air-to-air refuelling and firefighting. Its name recalls the Indian rhinoceros sent to King Manuel I in 1515. The first aircraft landed at Beja at 16:30 on 19 October 2023 after a transatlantic delivery flight; five were ordered in 2019 for 827 million euros, with a simulator and twelve years of support, to replace the C-130H.

A third KC-390 arrived on 18 July 2025 and a fourth, the first with the refuelling kit, on 24 January 2026; a sixth aircraft has been ordered. The squadron’s first high-profile relief mission came on 26–27 June 2026, when two KC-390s left Beja for Venezuela with 64 Portuguese emergency personnel and about 23 tonnes of aid after the earthquakes there.

The second new type is the A-29N Super Tucano. Portugal ordered 12 in December 2024 for about 200 million euros, and the first NATO-configured examples were handed over at OGMA, Alverca, on 17 December 2025 for Esquadra 101 at Beja. At the same ceremony a letter of intent was signed to build an aircraft factory at Beja able to make the A-29N; The Aviationist notes it would be the type’s third production line after Brazil and Florida. No production start date has been published.

The runways Germany paid for were always a tempting civil asset. A civil terminal, costing 33 million euros of European regional funds and state budget money between 2006 and 2008, opened alongside the base. The first commercial flight left at 18:25 on 13 April 2011, a TACV Boeing 757-200 with 70 passengers bound for Fogo in Cape Verde. ANA Aeroportos de Portugal holds the concession; the national AIP names the commander of Air Base 11 as the military operator and says military activity takes precedence.

Passengers did not follow. Observador counted 6,624 passengers and 245 movements in the first three years; charter series to London, Stuttgart and Hanover came and went, and a Paris route in 2014 was cancelled after four of twelve planned rotations. In 2017 ANA said the airport served essentially for parking and maintenance, noting that people fly to destinations, not airports. English Wikipedia, citing ANA, gives 5,096 passengers in 2018.

Instead Beja became an aircraft park. Hi Fly has used it since 2016 for parking and line maintenance, and based its Airbus A380 there from 2018 until 17 December 2020. Its sister company Mesa opened a 30-million-euro maintenance hangar on 12 January 2021. The planned Embraer A-29N factory would add a third industrial use. For the Air Force the arrangement is mostly quiet: the military keep priority on the runway, and the civil side has rarely been busy enough to compete.