Three of the most prominent names in aviation history, Latécoère (1937), Breguet (1939) and Dassault (1971), helped found and develop the Biarritz site.
Three of the most prominent names in France’s aviation history, Latécoère (1937), Breguet (1939) and Dassault (1971), took part in founding and developing the Biarritz facility.
Pierre Georges Latécoère decided to build the first aircraft production workshops there on two farming estates in 1936.
He founded Société Méridionale Aéronautique with Louis Breguet in 1939. The company was dismantled in 1940, and the facility ended up in the latter’s hands.
The Br1150 Atlantic and Br121 Jaguar were serially produced in Biarritz, starting in 1960 and 1965 respectively. Société des Avions Marcel Dassault acquired them in 1967, when the company bought 66% of Breguet Aviation’s capital.
The Biarritz facility was integrated into Dassault Aviation in 1971, when Dassault and Bréguet merged into AMD-BA (Avions Marcel Dassault-Bréguet Aviation).
Biarritz then specialized in producing and manufacturing composite parts for civil and military aircraft. Breguet’s heritage of expertise in metal-to-metal bonding of aeronautical components enabled its staff to easily adapt to the manufacture of composite materials in the second half of the 1970s.
The first composite part ever to equip an aircraft, the Mirage III‘s honeycomb-carbon rudder, was produced there in 1974. In 1978, it serially produced the composite parts for the Mirage F-1 and Falcon 50, and the Mirage 4000 composite subsets and tailfin it supplied to Saint Cloud. As part of their research into composite material structures, Dassault and Aérospatiale jointly undertaked the development of a carbon wing. This application, to a vital component of a civil aircraft, is a world first. The Falcon 10 No. 5, modified to accommodate the carbon wing, was renamed Falcon V 10 F. Dassault built the static test cell and the left half of the wing in Biarritz, while Aérospatiale built the fatigue test cell and the right half of the wing in Nantes.
Parts for the Mirage 2000, Rafale and all the Falcon aircraft followed.
Biarritz also took charge of building complex structures, like the Super Étendard pilot’s seat bucket (1975), and the beginning of the Alpha Jet’s nose fuselage serial production (1976), 500 units of which were finally manufactured. It then became responsible for the Rafale and Mirage 2000 aft fuselages, and the Rafale’s tailfin assembly.
Since the early 2020s, the facility has been responsible for: