Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante

The Bandeirante began with a directive issued by the Brazilian Ministry of Aeronautics in 1965 calling for a transport aircraft suited to both civil and military operations, reliable and cheap to run. It was to have turboprop engines, a low-mounted wing and room for eight occupants, requirements drawn from a study of Brazilian commercial air traffic and shaped to match the airports the country already had. The project consumed 110,000 engineering hours and produced 12,000 manufacturing drawings backed by 22,000 hours of structural and aerodynamic calculation, plus an estimated 282,000 hours of manufacturing and tooling. The outcome, the YC-95 or EMB 100 prototype, flew on 26 October 1968 on two Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-20 engines.

The promising test results led to production being approved in mid-1969 and to the creation of the company that would build it: Embraer assumed responsibility on 2 January 1970. The second prototype flew on 19 October 1969 and the third on 29 June 1970. By then the market had shifted and an eight-seat aircraft looked less viable, so the design was quickly reworked as the EMB 110 Bandeirante with greater capacity and several technical advances, powered by 680 shp PT6A-27 engines. Type certification came in late 1972; deliveries to the Brazilian Air Force, which had ordered eighty transports, began in February 1973, and airline service with Transbrasil started on 16 April that year. The Spanish-language article dates the first flight of the passenger model to 9 August 1972.

The Bandeirante spawned dozens of sub-variants: the C-95 military transport, the EMB 110A radio-navigation calibrator, the EMB 110B aerial survey version, the EMB 110K1 freighter, a seven-seat executive model, the SC-95 search and rescue aircraft, the EMB 110S1 geophysical survey machine and the EMB 111 maritime patroller, designated P-95 in Brazil, six of which went to the Chilean Navy. It also served as an air ambulance in Mexico between 1979 and 1982. Production figures differ by source: the English article counts 503 aircraft built between 1968 and 1990, while the Spanish one gives 494. More than a hundred served with the Brazilian Air Force, which on 15 December 2010 flew the first example modernised as the C/P-95 with new avionics installed by Elbit Systems' Brazilian subsidiary; it then had 96 aircraft in its active fleet, and 48 were still reported in service in 2017.