Aircraft
Falcon 6X Begins Life in Biarritz
Dassault's Biarritz plant is a key element in the company's business jet and military aircraft manufacturing process.
Falcon 6X computational fluid dynamics. (Image: Dassault)
Falcon 6X computational fluid dynamics. (Image: Dassault)

To understand how a new Falcon jet gets built, one must begin at the company’s heart, which isn’t at the headquarters in Saint-Cloud near Paris but resides at a seemingly jumbled mass of old and new buildings farther south in Biarritz, France.

The plant has a long history in aerospace manufacturing, starting in 1936 as a Latecoere factory that was purchased by Breguet before World War II, then by Dassault in 1971. The company did pioneering work in metal bonding with components made with an aluminum honeycomb core, using an autoclave purchased in the 1960s that still is running today.

Loading…