Chile’s SEFAA — Sección de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos — is the official body of the Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC) responsible for investigating anomalous aerial phenomena in Chilean airspace. That airspace covers 32 million square kilometres, from Arica in the north down to the South Pole. Chile’s official UAP reporting history begins in 1968. Case numbers have now passed 2,229. Monthly resolved case reports are published at sefaa.dgac.gob.cl.
The 1968 Origin
On July 9, 1968, Coronel de Aviación Sergio Bravo Flores — Director of Chile’s Meteorological Office — sent the first official circular requesting UAP reports to 43 aeronautical installations across Chile, from Arica to the Antarctic territory. This was not an unofficial interest project. It was a formal official communication on government letterhead requesting systematic UAP documentation from aviation personnel across the entire country.
Bravo’s Comisión Chilena para Estudios de Fenómenos Espaciales No Identificados ran from 1968 to 1975. In that time it gathered roughly a dozen investigation reports from sightings across Chile. Some of those reports were sent to the University of Colorado — the Condon Commission, the US government-funded academic panel reviewing global UAP evidence in the late 1960s.
CEFAA to SEFAA
After the 1975 retirement of Director Bravo and a gap of two decades, a wave of sightings in Arica in March–April 1997 prompted the creation of a new permanent body. On October 3, 1997, Resolution 01599 established the Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (CEFAA). On October 18, 2021, CEFAA was restructured, renamed SEFAA, and placed under the DGAC’s Subdepartamento Comunicacional. The institutional mandate remained the same; the administrative home changed.
The Case Count
SEFAA’s sequential case numbering reveals the scale of its operation. Case 2229 was filed on April 11, 2026 — visible in the April 2026 resolved cases release. With cases numbered sequentially from the programme’s systematic recording, Chile’s SEFAA has processed over 2,200 officially documented anomalous aerial phenomena reports. Monthly case releases for January, February, March, and April 2026 are all publicly available at sefaa.dgac.gob.cl.
Source: sefaa.dgac.gob.cl. SEFAA history page. Monthly case publications 2026.