The current COO of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, Guillaume Faury, is due to replace Tom Enders as Chief executive of Airbus Group on April 10, 2019. He should be inducted during a general assembly held in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.
Guillaume Faury started his career as a test engineer in the Direction Générale de l’Armement, the French Defense procurement and technology agency, and carried out the testing of the French-German attack helicopter “Tiger”, manufactured by Eurocopter. Five years later, he became the head of R&D of the latter.
After a brief break in the automobile industry from 2009, as head of manufacturing and then R&D at PSA (the group that comprises Peugeot, Citroen, and Opel among others), he came back to his first love as the head of Eurocopter in 2013, which would later become Airbus Helicopters. He supervised the development of the H160 and of CityAirbus, a flying taxi concept.
Following the departure of Fabrice Brégier, the former second in command at Airbus that was supposed to succeed to Tom Enders, Guillaume Faury became COO of Airbus Commercial in February 2018.
As the new CEO, Faury will have to supervise the ramping up of the A320neo, the backbone of the manufacturer, with a target output of 60 aircraft per month by mid-2019, and 63 by next year, and continue the A220 integration, former Bombardier C-Series, into Airbus catalog.
On the political side, Faury will also have to deal with the quarrel between Airbus and its main competitor, Boeing. On April 9, 2019, the United States Trade Representative, threatened to tax the aircraft manufacturer if the European Union continued to pay subsidies.
Passionate about piloting, Guillaume Faury has flown more than 1.300 hours on both planes and helicopters.