Three prototypes were built and flown; the first, the Nieuport 160/1, crashed in September 1936, delaying the flight programme until the flight of the second prototype, the S.N.CA.O 161, on 15 October 1937. In April 1938 this aircraft was also lost, though by then the third prototype, definitively named Loire-Nieuport 161, had been flying for a month. Development was terminated because the competing Morane-Saulnier MS.405 had been preferred and given a pre-production order in March 1937, leaving the fourth prototype 161 uncompleted.
