CATAM began as a presidential convenience. According to English Wikipedia’s history of El Dorado airport, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, president from 1953, created a liaison squadron in 1954 under his own direct orders, based at Techo, Bogotá’s first airport. It proved useful enough to grow into a military airlift group, which reached the status of a transport base in 1959.

The new El Dorado airport, begun in 1955, opened on 10 December 1959 and replaced Techo; the air force moved its transport unit to a site beside it. English Wikipedia’s article on the service dates the creation of the Base Aérea de Transporte Militar to 1959, with the opening of El Dorado; its airport article dates the inauguration of the Comando Aéreo de Transporte Militar to 28 May 1963. Both dates are given here because the sources differ. In 1977 the command was named after the Colombian aviation pioneer Camilo Daza Álvarez, an honorary brigadier general.

The first two C-130B Hercules, FAC-1001 and FAC-1002, were delivered to CATAM in 1968; between 1990 and 1991 the US government gave six more C-130Bs to support operations against drug trafficking and the guerrillas. In 2003 night-vision goggles were introduced on the C-130s and CN-235s, which, in Wikipedia’s words, allowed transport, parachuting and aeromedical evacuation on combat runways lacking illumination. Spanish Wikipedia lists C-130B/H, C295, CN-235, Boeing 737 and KC-767 with the base’s Escuadrón 811.

The fleet’s age became political in 2026. On 23 March 2026 C-130H FAC 1016 crashed on take-off at Puerto Leguízamo in Putumayo; Infodefensa reports 70 dead and 57 injured, while other reports gave 69. The air force’s investigation, as reported by Infodefensa, blamed human error: the crew misjudged the relation between the aircraft’s weight, about 133,000 lb against a maximum of 139,000 lb, and a runway of about 1,200 m, under pressure to leave before the weather closed in. The commander, Gen. Carlos Silva, said the aircraft had operated within authorised limits; the findings contradicted President Petro’s claims that age and maintenance were to blame.

CATAM shares its runways with Bogotá’s international airport. El Dorado has two parallel runways, 14L/32R and 14R/32L, each 3,800 m long, at 2,548 m above sea level, according to English Wikipedia; the military base occupies its own area beside the civil terminals, reached since 1996 by new ground accesses through the zone devoted to the Military Transport Aviation Command.

That arrangement explains much of what CATAM does. Aircraft arriving from abroad come here first, from the Hercules of 1968 to the Super Tucanos of 2006, and the air force’s strategic transports, its tanker and the presidential flight operate from the capital rather than from the combat commands. The squadron lists published by Wikipedia name a transport group (81), a special flights group (82) and an intelligence squadron (831); the number of aircraft on the base at any time is not published and is not given here.

In 2008 Colombia contracted Israel Aerospace Industries to convert a second-hand Boeing 767-200ER into a tanker and VIP transport. Named Júpiter, FAC-1202 was tested in September 2010 and delivered in November 2010, and in March 2019 it supported US Navy EA-18G Growlers at Exercise Red Flag 19-2. CATAM is also home to the presidential and VIP flight, Grupo de Vuelos Especiales 82, with a Boeing 737 BBJ among its aircraft, according to Spanish Wikipedia.

New aircraft still arrive through Bogotá: Colombia’s first three Super Tucanos landed at CATAM on 14 December 2006, before the type went to the combat commands at Apiay and elsewhere. Where the two Embraer KC-390s ordered in 2026 will be based has not been announced in the sources checked.