Biography | Guillaume Faury — The Return to Eurocopter Leadership at Marignane

Guillaume Faury's return to the helicopter business became effective on 1 May 2013.

EADS had announced in March that he would succeed Lutz Bertling as chief executive of Eurocopter, following Bertling's departure at the end of April.

The appointment brought Faury back from Peugeot, where his responsibilities had included research and development.

It was a return to a business he already knew.

Between 1998 and 2008, he had worked at Eurocopter in engineering, flight testing and management, including responsibility for the EC225 and EC725 programmes.

The new position joined that technical experience to responsibility for the whole helicopter company.

Marignane, beside Marseille Provence Airport, is the geographical anchor of the story.

The company's headquarters and industrial site connect the appointment to the place where the helicopter business was based.

The date marks the start of his executive term, rather than a documented arrival at a particular doorway or a first-day ceremony.

An appointment announcement issued from Amsterdam does not, by itself, describe what happened on the Marignane factory floor.

The company's name also needs care.

Faury took charge of Eurocopter in 2013; the change to Airbus Helicopters followed at the beginning of 2014 as part of the wider group's reorganisation.

A contemporary aviation-industry report described the planned name change as effective on 1 January 2014.

The new branding therefore came during his tenure, not before his appointment.

In December 2017, industry reporting announced his next move to the commercial-aircraft business at Airbus.

Seen from Marignane, the 2013 appointment is the hinge between his earlier work on helicopter programmes and the broader executive career that followed.

The map pin identifies the established industrial site, not a public tour entrance.

Assembly halls, flight-test areas and other operational facilities remain working aviation spaces, and the historical story does not imply visitor access.

Sources: [EADS appointment announcement, 12 March 2013](https://www.pressebox.com/pressrelease/eurocopter-deutschland-gmbh/eads-appoints-guillaume-faury-new-ceo-of-eurocopter-as-lutz-bertling-departs-the-group/boxid/580581); [contemporary renaming report](https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2013-08-01/eurocopter-be-renamed-airbus-helicopter); [2017 career transition](https://verticalmag.com/news/faury-leave-airbus-helicopters-join-airbus-commercial/); [Airbus site address](https://www.airbus.com/en/airbus-contact-us).

Photo: © European Union, 2023 / EC, Xavier Lejeune, [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guillaume_Faury_-_2023.jpg), resized. This portrait was taken at the European Commission in Brussels on 30 November 2023, ten years after the appointment; it does not depict the event or its location.