Story ID: 5122613alerts
Eurocopter’s CEO Sets Priorities
By: Thierry Dubois
Caption: Eurocopter to be renamed Airbus Helicopters to reflect its transformation.
Word Count: 189
Guillaume Faury, who took the helm at Eurocopter in May but has rarely since met with the press, set the helicopter manufacturer’s top priorities for the future last week during a meeting organized by the French association of aerospace journalists. It appears his vision for Eurocopter products is different from his predecessor’s.
“We are selling high-end helicopters,” he said, as opposed to the “best value for money” project approach of former CEO Lutz Bertling. Faury wants Eurocopter’s production processes to improve, drawing on the experience of sister company Airbus and the automotive industry.
Therefore, he said, renaming the company Airbus Helicopters will reflect a transformation.
Asked about EC175 and EC145T2 program delays, he said he has reshuffled priorities in research and development and has included these twins as prime concerns. The firm has thus passed on some “business opportunities” that would have increased the R&D workload.
Faury predicts that “2014 will be a year of executing what we have decided–different from 2013, which was a year of solving crises [among them the EC225 grounding].”