Region boasts major potential for aviation-related businesses

Asia-Pacific is widely expected to become one of the fastest-growing regions for business aviation over the coming decade.

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In an interview during the rollout of the Falcon 10X in France, Didier Raynard, senior vice president of sales for Asia-Pacific at Dassault Aviation, told VIR's Hara Nguyen why markets such as Vietnam are increasingly important to the company's regional strategy.What are the most outstanding advantages of the Falcon 10X compared to other aircraft in the same segment, and the challenges it may face to compete?

The 10X is our future Falcon. What we are doing with the 10X is positioning ourselves in the ultra-long-range segment of business aviation. It's an aircraft that will propose a 7,500 nautical mile range, able to fly from Southeast Asia to Europe nonstop or the US West Coast. This is a segment where we are not there yet.

Dassault Aviation is one of the oldest family-owned companies in business aviation, over 100 years old, and we've been in this business for over 60 years. Today we have several aircraft in our family: the Falcon 2000, the 6X, and 8X. The 10X will allow us to be in this segment which is very important for us, especially in Southeast Asia due to the distances you need to achieve to reach Europe, Africa, or the United States.

What we are proposing with the 10X is something very different. We are proposing the biggest cabin in that segment. That's extremely important because you are supposed to fly long hours, so you need the most comfortable cabin. We are proposing something very different compared to what already exists.

We have the most advanced entertainment system, and the cabin is flexible; you can have up to four different lounges, as well as a crew rest compartment to accommodate a bigger crew for long hours of flight.