Situated on an immense campus at the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock is Dassault Falcon Jet. At 1.25 million square feet, the facility is one of the largest Dassault sites in the world, and it is the company’s only completion center.
Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, the facility is entering a new chapter as it prepares for the arrival of the first Falcon 10X and the untold number of challenges and opportunities the future may bring.
“It’s amazing what we’ve done, the products that we have today, the history that we have,” said Mark Bremer, vice president of industrial programs at Dassault Falcon Jet in Little Rock and president of the Arkansas Aerospace & Defense Alliance. “It’s going to be exciting what happens in the next 50 years.”
The history of Dassault stretches back to the early 1900s, when founder Marcel Bloch invented the Éclair propeller in France. When the country was occupied by Germany during World War II, Bloch refused to cooperate with Nazis and was sent to a concentration camp. When he was released, he received his wallet and found he had left in it a four-leaf clover.
“That became his talisman,” Bremer said. “If you look at our logo, you see it’s shaped like an airplane. It has the opening in the bottom for new ideas to flow in and out of our company, and it has his talisman, the four-leaf clover.”
Bloch changed his last name to Dassault after the war.
The Falcon debuted more than 60 years ago. Then called the Mystère 20, it became the aircraft of choice for Pan Am after Charles Lindbergh saw the plane in Paris and famously said, “I’ve found our bird.”
Over the past 50 years, Dassault has delivered more than 2,600 Falcons, most of which were finished at the Little Rock site.
“What we do here in Little Rock is really give the aircraft its personality,” Bremer said. “We give it the exterior paint. We do all the cabinetry work, all the interior, all the soft goods, all the specification the customer wants inside the aircraft.”
Dassault purchased the facility in 1975, but the site has been used for aviation since the 1960s, when financier Jackson T. Stephens Sr., tired of traveling to the Kansas City area to have his plane serviced, founded Little Rock Aeromotive at the location. FedEx also got its start at the facility and utilized the Falcon 20.
Bremer noted the legacy of aircraft completion activity in Little Rock, where companies such as Arkansas Modification, Mid-Coast Aviation, Central Flying Service and Little Rock Aeromotive bought green, or unfinished, aircraft from not just Dassault but Gulfstream, Bombardier and others to complete in Little Rock.
The Dassault Falcon Jet completes the Falcon 2000, Falcon 900 and Falcon 8X and delivered the first Falcon 6X last year. In December 2023, the company announced an expansion to accommodate the forthcoming Falcon 10X.
“It’s becoming a real airplane, and we’re excited by it,” Bremer said.
In addition to the Falcon, Dassault Falcon Jet’s parent company, Dassault Aviation, also produces the military aircraft Rafale, the technology of which is integrated into the Falcon.
“Our aircraft take the benefit of the DNA that’s in the Rafale to make our business aircraft the first to have digital flight controls and the first to have heads-up display,” he said. “That technology really makes our aircraft technically advanced.”
In addition, like the fighter plane, the Falcon is flown using a sidestick, rather than a yoke. All the screens and avionics are digital and utilize a mouse-type controller to make inputs to functions and changes to displays.
The Dassault Falcon 8x.
(Photo courtesy of Dassault)
“Having digital flight controls, having the ability to make inputs by clicking on the screen really makes the load on the pilots much easier and much safer,” Bremer said, “and we have heads-up display, which folds down, and they can see through heads-up all the instrumentation without looking down into the cockpit.”
High-tech features of the facility include a laser system that allows customers to see the exterior graphics of the plane before it is painted and computer numerical control machining centers that run “lights out,” meaning workers can preprogram machines to produce parts overnight and on the weekends.
Dassault Group even has its own software company, Dassault Systèmes, that produces CATIA, the software used to design Dassault aircraft.
Coupled with that technology is the skilled labor that transforms leather hides and wood veneer into the luxurious upholstery and cabinets that furnish the Falcon.
“You can have all the technology you want, but at the end of the day, it gets down to the people doing the work,” Bremer said. “We combine technology with the skills of our craftsmen and artisans to produce our world-class aircraft.”
He noted the interplay between the advanced technology and natural materials used to manufacture the Falcon interiors. Dassault Falcon Jet imports the leather for its upholstery from Europe, where the hides are of higher quality because cattle are not exposed to branding, barbed-wire fences and insects. The company only uses bull hides because bulls are larger and cows may have stretch marks from calving.
Even then, the hides have imperfections that are marked by workers before the leather is placed onto a CNC machine, which cuts around the marks when making patterns. The cut leather is sewn together at the facility to craft seats, divans and other furnishings unlike any most commercial airline customers have ever experienced.
“It’s just beautiful,” Bremer said. “The stitching, the way everything’s shaped, the way our artisans craft our seats is world class.”
The same attention to detail goes into the cabinetry of the aircraft, starting with the wood, which is sourced from around the world.
“Every tree is like you and me. It’s unique. It’s a living thing that grows,” Bremer said. “Depending on where it grows in the world, it can be the same species, but it grows in one area versus another, and the minerals in those soils are different, and those minerals come up into the trees, and so those are some of the things we must evaluate.”
Although the finished cabinets look and feel as solid as any one might find in an executive boardroom, they are made using high-tech materials that are designed for flight and use an aluminum honeycomb design that is both strong and featherlight.
Even more surprising is the unseen network of electric, plumbing and ventilation systems crisscrossing the back of the cabinets.
The cabinets are built on a fixture that slides into a mock-up of an aircraft known as a cabinet-integrated bench, or CIB, which allows workers to ensure a good fit prior to installation in the aircraft. There are about 16,000 individual parts that go into a set of cabinets for a Falcon 8X, Bremer said.
After the aircraft are finished, a flight test team “cold soaks” the planes by taking them on a five-hour test flight to ensure everything works properly at altitude and after returning to the ground.
The finished product is luxurious to say the least, offering a roomy cabin with high-end cabinetry and seating for 10 to 14 passengers. The 10X is set to be larger than the 6X, boasting a 110-foot wingspan, and it is designed to imitate the feeling of a home, providing more defined spaces for kitchen, dining, recreation and sleeping.
“A lot of people think our customers are wealthy people who are just using it for their own pleasure. That’s not true,” Bremer said. “Our aircraft are business aircraft, and they’re used for many different types of corporations around the world, heads of state and individuals. I don’t know if you’ve flown lately, but it’s difficult to get anywhere anymore, especially a direct flight out of Little Rock.”
He added that flying from Little Rock to Wichita, Kansas, which is 450 miles away, could take six or seven hours using commercial airlines.
“Our customers can leave here and get there within an hour, hour and a half and be doing business,” he said. “Not only that; they can be doing business while they’re flying because we have satellite communication. They have connectivity, they have internet access, everything they need to run their business, so it’s really a tool.”
Furthermore, he said, because Falcons are among the quietest aircraft in the industry and have a highly sophisticated pressurization system, travelers are not as tired when they land and can get to work immediately.
Company loyalty runs high, he said, adding that the some 1,800 Little Rock team members take pride in their work at Dassault Falcon Jet.
“We say we’re part of the Falcon family, and that’s true,” he said. “We work together. A lot of people are friends here outside of work. It’s a family-owned business still today. It’s owned by the Dassault family, and it’s remarkable how much pride our people have in what they do, so you’ll see people outside of work wearing their Falcon hats and their T-shirts and all that out in the community, and I think that we’re good stewards of the community.”
Dassault Falcon Jet is planning numerous activities to celebrate its anniversary, including a company-wide competition to design the 50-year logo, as well as various internal events and external promotions.
The company receives plenty of support from the community, the state and city chambers of commerce, and the Arkansas governor’s office, he said, adding that the state has a business-friendly environment.
He noted that aerospace and defense is the state’s largest export, and there are 200 aerospace and defense companies in Arkansas.
“Our aircraft touch the globe, coming out of Arkansas,” he said. “At any given time, there’s a piece of Arkansas flying around the world on all the various continents, so that’s a huge impact.”
Bremer added that he is excited about the industry’s next 50 years, especially given advancements in drone technology, electric vertical takeoff and landing, private aircraft, space travel and more.
“It’s changing so dramatically,” he said. “For us, we have our fighter technology, which drives a lot of our technology. We have the 6X that we just started delivering last year. We have the 10X coming, so I’m just excited about what that’s bringing and how that’s changing what we offer in both the technologies and just an amazing aircraft that we’re going to produce.”
To meet the workforce needs of the future, the state has provided industry-led grants to support aerospace programs at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock, Arkansas State University Three Rivers in Malvern and Southern Arkansas University Tech in Camden.
Equally important, Bremer said, is ensuring young people are aware of the opportunities available to them if they pursue skilled trades. Dassault has a number of entry-level jobs that allow employees to grow within the company, he said.
“Yes, we need pilots, we need the engineers, we need leadership people that have degrees and advanced education, but there’s a huge amount of jobs … that don’t require that, but they do require high-tech knowledge and high-tech training to be able to do what they do. In return, they’re paid well for that,” he said. “Companies like us and others have great benefits, and so it’s not just you’re going to work for somebody as a job; this is a career, and it’s an amazing career. I mean, what’s cooler than making airplanes?”
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