Story ID: 585
Dassault Flying High in China
By: Matt Thurber
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Word Count: 269
Dassault Falcon expects to deliver 20 Falcon business aircraft a year to China over the next five years, and confirmed that it is to open Dassault Falcon Aircraft Services-China by the end of June in partnership with Shanghai Hawker Pacific.

The French company is seeing rapid growth of its fleet in China and expects orders here to grow faster than in any other country, president and CEO John Rosanvallon told a press conference at the ABACE show in Shanghai yesterday. Although there are only eight Falcon jets currently flying in mainland China, Jean-Michel Jacob, Dassault’s new Beijing-based vice president of international sales, said he sees 20 deliveries a realistic target in view of recent sales success.

Dassault is displaying two jets at the show this week–the tri-engine Falcon 7X and twin-engine Falcon 2000LX. As part of the opening the new Shanghai center, the manufacturer will be boosting training of maintenance engineers, with a new program due to start by the end of the second quarter this year. This will “play a key role with a Falcon fleet that is expected to triple in China by the end of 2012,” according to the company.

Composed of a team of Falcon technicians, each averaging more than 10 years of experience maintaining Falcon jets, the Falcon/Shanghai Hawker Pacific program will help Chinese technicians learn the Falcon products by working closely together with Falcon technicians from Europe and the U.S. “This facility in Shanghai is an essential part of our strategy to support our growing market share in China,” said Rosanvallon.