The company has subsidiaries in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China, Romania, and Sri Lanka.

The primary activities of the Sonaca Group are the design and construction of the movable elements of wings (slats and flaps) and complex structural components for civil and military aircraft.

Sonaca is an heir of the Belgian company Avions Fairey, but before that was SEGA (French: Société Générale d'Entreprises Aéronautiques).

SEGA was created on 25 June 1920, witnessed by the notary Maillard, by a group of local notables: Fernand Loescher, Victor Dupuis, Alphonse and Désiré Jaumin, André Gobbe, Marius Loiselet and Arille Carlier.

The first activity developed by SEGA was a flying school launched by Commander Fernand Jacquet, a 7-victory WWI-ace and a leading figure in military aviation, a position from which he resigned in January 1921.

In July 1921, Jacquet obtained a major contract for training military pilots, which for nearly ten years was the primary activity of SEGA.

In the 1920s, SEGA carried out repairs, produced under license 5 AVIA BH-21, as well as prototypes of the HB-1 based on plans by Henri Bulté.

Faced with SABCA's refusal to produce these licensed aircraft, Fairey UK (Hayes) decided to create a subsidiary under the direction of Ernest Oscar Tips, Société Belge des Avions Fairey, using SEGA's aerodrome, facilities, and qualified staff.

When six European countries chose to acquire F-104G combat planes, "Avions Fairey" and SABCA joined forces to produce them.

In 1972, the English company "Fairey Aviation" bought Britten-Norman, which was virtually bankrupt despite its interesting twin-engine BN-2 Islander utility plane.

[1] Thus, Avions Fairey, whose activity had never been interrupted after its request for a composition on 30 September 1977, officially took over under the name of Sonaca - an acronym for “Société Nationale de Construction Aérospatiale” - as from 1 June 1978.

In 2007, Sonaca's Canadian subsidiary received support from the Government of Montreal to invest $17 million in the expansion of its aircraft wing manufacturing and assembly plant.

Sonaca has been involved in numerous projects over the past 30 years, including the European shuttle Hermes, Atmospheric Re-entry Demonstrator (ARD), GSTP, FESTIP, Crew Rescue Vehicle (CRV-X38), SPOT5, ISS Columbus, Mars Beagle 2, Aladin-Aeolus, Corot, Pléiades, MUSIS, MPCV Tank Bulkhead, MWI and ICI instruments from MetOp SG.