On the five-year anniversary of the opening of Dassault Falcon Service’s (DFS) service center in Mérignac, France, the airframer announced Wednesday the operation will expand its capabilities there to include the Falcon 900EX EASy, 2000EX EASy, and the wide-cabin Falcon 6X, which is set to enter into service next year.
Located close to Dassault Aviation’s final assembly facility near Bordeaux, the Mérignac service center “has proved indispensable in multiple ways,” said Jean Kayanakis, senior v-p of worldwide Falcon customer service and service center network. “It has helped [to take] some of the heavy maintenance load off DFS’s busy Paris Le Bourget facility. Besides, as the service facility most closely linked to our production and engineering teams, it is ideally suited to resolve complex maintenance issues.”
Additionally, Kayanakis said, the service center has become a resource for the customer service organization that Dassault relocated from Paris to Mérignac.
The 7,500-sq-m (80,729-sq-ft), six-bay Mérignac service center was originally opened to support the large cabin, long-range 7X and 8X trijets. Since its opening, the service center has mostly been operating at maximum capacity and has completed 35 of 53 Falcon 7X C-checks, which take a minimum of six weeks to complete. With 62 maintenance crew on staff, Mérignac performs structural repair, cabin refurbishment and modifications, avionics upgrades, carpentry, and paint, as well as heavy maintenance.