Bordeaux, the showcase of the aeronautics industry

Dassault Aviation, whose Falcon and Rafale assembly plant is based in Bordeaux, has announced a lot of business in 2019. The French State has already ordered 180 Rafales and 96 more have been ordered by Egypt, Qatar and India.

In April, the Bordeaux Airport runway will welcome Qatari and Indian Rafale trainee pilots. In 2019, the company plans to deliver 45 Falcon and 26 Rafale export aircraft, which will result in a significant increase in turnover. The Bordeaux region will be among the main beneficiaries. Dassault has four factories in the Bordeaux region, employing a total of 3,000 people. That number is set to rise with new hires and also transfers of staff from the company's Paris sites as part of a corporate transformation plan consisting in bringing the engineers who design the aircraft closer to those who build them. New buildings will be constructed at Bordeaux airport to accommodate these new employees.

Based in the South-West of France, the Aerospace Valley global competitiveness cluster is Europe's number-one region for jobs in the Aeronautics, Space and Embedded Systems sector.

The French government continues to support the cluster and in February 2019, it renewed Aerospace Valley’s competitiveness cluster label for the 2019-2022 period. Aerospace Valley has over 800 members: large companies, SMEs, research laboratories, universities and graduate schools, local authorities and economic development bodies.

The main challenges the members want to tackle are hybrid planes, autonomous and better-connected public transport, working on the aeronautics industry of the future and the data economy. The goal is to confirm its position as the world's no.1 Aeronautics and Space cluster here in South-West France with better coordination on a national level and more assertive policies on a European level.