Brazil is the Leader in South American Aviation

By Alan Smith

Embraer 190 with Lufthansa. (Mario Ferioli)As the largest nation in South America, Brazil covers nearly half the continent with a population of 201,103,330. It is just a bit smaller than the United States. Brazil’s largest cities are Sao Paolo, Rio De Janeiro, and Recife in the north. Recife has steel mills near the mouth of the Amazon, and Sao Paolo is the business and financial center in the southeast. The capital, built mostly during the 50s, is Brasilia located inland in the highlands. Brazil is bordered by every South American nation except Chile and Equador.

Interest in aviation came early. The Brazilian military, impressed by the formation of the British RAF in 1918, followed a few years later by the Italian and French air forces, decided Brazil would benefit with its own air force. It took some time to persuade The Embraer A-29 Super Tucano support aircraft has been purchased by the USAF in a $355 million contract through the Sierra Nevada Corportation in Sparks NV. (Courtesy of Sierra Nevada Corp.)government officials of the idea. People had begun to build and fly airplanes in Brazil; after 1930, the Muiz M-7 and M-9 biplanes appeared. They were Stearman-like aircraft that made good trainers.

The Spanish civil war, and the opening engagements of World War II finally got the Ministry of Aeronautics established in 1941 with an air force as a department and whose authority included civil aviation.

As WW II accelerated, and without any military aircraft manufacturing ability, the new Brazilian air force acquired 21 different kinds of American trainers, fighters, medium bombers and transports.  They joined the USAF in patrolling the Atlantic coast to discover and attack German submarines.

British Airways Embraer ERJ 145 taking off from Bristol Airport, Bristol, England. (Adrian PingstoneFor many years after the war Brazil’s air force was supplied by imported military aircraft.  Then, in 1969, a military tribunal (who had taken over the government in 1968 after the elected president had been incapacitated by strokes) that wanted Brazil to have its own aircraft manufacturing capability formed Empresa Brasilieria de Aeronautica to begin the building of their own aircraft.

As a government-owned company the aircraft builder became known as Embraer and its first civilian plane was the EMB-110, a light twin executive transport. Things went well for a time and the company moved into the construction of intermediate jet transports. They were twin jet aircraft, several of which compare to the Douglas MD-80. The government gave orders for military aircraft.

The Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet. (Courtesy Embraer S.A.)Following the Gulf war, a serious recession struck the financial world. Embraer suffered along with everyone else. Layoffs among the 5,500 workers were forced and sales continued to drop. By 1993 the company was technically bankrupt and management appealed to the Brazilian government to let Embraer become a privately held company with outside refinancing from the business world. This was achieved in 1994 and Embraer got back to work.

Now Embraer has firm orders of $15.4 billion in USD, more than 17,000 employees, and, last year, posted a net profit of $203 million USD. They export their airliners to many European countries and the U.S. and continue to accept orders from the Brazilian Air Force. Recently, they began building a single engine agricultural aircraft called the Ipanema. One interesting thing about Brazil is that airplanes, cars, buses etc. all run on hydrated ethanol. They don’t care about oil prices.