On 3 October 1997, the Director General of Chile’s civil aviation authority signed a resolution creating the Comite de Estudios de Fenomenos Aereos Anomalos within the DGAC. The creation was prompted by a series of aerial sightings reported in Arica and the expressed interest of the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Air Force. Formal aerial phenomena reporting in Chile dates further back: to 1968, when a Colonel in the Meteorological Office began collecting reports from 43 aeronautical installations.
In October 2021, the committee was renamed the Seccion de Estudios de Fenomenos Aereos Anomalos (SEFAA) and moved to the DGAC’s communications subdepartment. A new website and graphic identity were launched. The programme has received over 1,700 cases as of end 2021, with annual intake surging to 1,735 cases that year, a 200 per cent increase over prior years.
SEFAA employs a multidisciplinary review process comparable to France’s GEIPAN: meteorologists, aeronautical engineers, air traffic controllers, military specialists, nuclear physicists, and photogrammetry experts. Its digital case database, created in 2018, includes an online report submission form described as unique in Latin America. Monthly case reports are published on the official DGAC website, confirmed active through May 2026.
The 2014 Navy Helicopter Case
SEFAA’s most documented case occurred on 11 November 2014, when a Chilean Navy AS-532 Cougar helicopter on a routine daytime coastal patrol west of Santiago filmed an unidentified object using a WESCAM MX-15 HD infrared camera for approximately nine minutes. The object matched the helicopter’s velocity and twice appeared to emit a hot fluid or gas. Santiago Area Control Centre confirmed no known aircraft in the area. The object did not appear on primary radar.
CEFAA spent two years analysing the footage. Consultants included meteorologists, aeronautical engineers, air traffic controllers, a nuclear physicist (Mario Avila), photogrammetry experts from the Chilean Air Force, and France’s GEIPAN, which tentatively proposed a landing airliner explanation. CEFAA rejected this assessment due to the absence of radar contact and the anomalous plume behaviour. In January 2017, CEFAA Director General Ricardo Bermudez publicly released the footage and, for the first time in the programme’s history, designated the object “a genuine UFO.”
NARCAP was the first private research organisation to partner formally with CEFAA, producing joint photographic and video analyses of Chilean cases between 2010 and 2012. SIGMA2, the technical commission of France’s 3AF, formalised technical cooperation with CEFAA in 2013.
SEFAA continues to publish monthly case data and conducts institutional outreach presentations at Chilean aerodromes. Its operating area covers Chile’s full airspace responsibility: approximately 32 million square kilometres from the northern border to the South Pole.
