Rodrigo Bravo Garrido

After two nights of sightings at Chacalluta airport (Arica) in March 1997, the General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC) created CEFAA (Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena) that year, under Chilean civil aviation. It brings together a multidisciplinary panel (astronomers, physicists, psychologists, aeronautical experts) to analyze FANI reports with a scientific method. Under the direction of General (ret.) Ricardo Bermúdez (2009–2016) it investigated and publicly acknowledged cases such as El Bosque (2010) and the naval helicopter (2014). It completes the quartet of Latin American official commissions alongside CRIDOVNI, OIFAA and CIAE.

During a FACh air parade at El Bosque (Santiago), nobody noticed anything live; on later reviewing the footage, an engineer spotted an object crossing at high speed between the squadrons. CEFAA gathered seven independent videos, commissioned a photogrammetric analysis that estimated very high speeds, and classified the case as anomalous. Later analyses proposed an insect near the lens.

A Chilean Navy Cougar helicopter filmed nine minutes of infrared video of an object visible only in thermal imaging off Valparaíso; CEFAA ran a two-year multi-agency investigation and officially published the footage and report in 2017.

In April 2013, technicians at the Doña Inés de Collahuasi mine —over 4,300 m in the Atacama altiplano— photographed a disc-shaped object that lingered nearby for about an hour before moving off. CEFAA, the official committee of Chile's DGAC under General (ret.) Ricardo Bermúdez, investigated the images with optical and thermal analysis and one analyst rated them an object or phenomenon of great interest, unidentified. Bermúdez himself urged caution: it was a single analyst's conclusion and the witnesses did not cooperate.