Dassault Falcon Jet’s Little Rock Facility Takes Slicing, Sewing, and Spraying into the Future


BY PENNY BENJAMIN


Somewhere in the back of an upstairs closet in my house sits a giant teddy bear hand-sewn out of shearling, with leather paw pads and ears, and a soft button nose. He’s nearly twenty years old, but I can’t give him up. He’s a one-of-a-kind Dassault Falcon bear. And there just aren’t many of those around.


I’m not sure when the charming story of the Dassault Falcon teddy bears got started. Back then, the ladies in the sewing shop, as they were fondly called, gathered the leather and shearling scraps left over from the pattern-cutting machine, and turned them into stuffed animals. They sewed them on their own time, and sold them to employees to raise money for charities and people in need in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the Falcon completion factory is located.


Today you would be hard pressed to find enough scrap for a teddy bear’s hat.


Dassault Falcon Jet has always prided itself on the craftsmanship involved in its aircraft interiors. Skilled artisans sewed, cut, or painted each piece of the cabin, lovingly ushering everything from seat buckles to cabinet veneers through a meticulous process. But even artists have to update their methods sometimes, and the upholstery and finishing shops were in need of refreshing. Today, the artisans are still at the heart of the process, but now they have the latest technology at their fingertips, and the results are still pure art.


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