PERSPECTIVES


FRANCISCO PRUNERA-USACH ALL IN THE FAMILY


When Francisco Prunera-Usach left Istres, France for Little Rock, Arkansas in 1998, he was told he would be away no more than a couple of months, working to oversee safety inspection for the Dassault Falcon brand. Nearly 20 years later, Prunera-Usach retired from Dassault leaving behind a legacy of loyalty spanning 46 years, two countries and two generations.


“Dassault is a family,” says Prunera-Usach. “When someone begins to work on an aircraft, it is magical and it is difficult to turn away. When you touch a Falcon, [you] stay.”


In Prunera-Usach’s case, the people who were touched by the Dassault Falcon brand are quite literally his family. While home and career cannot be separated in the life of the modern worker, Prunera-Usach found the key to perfectly pairing the two realms—keeping the career track in the nuclear family. In addition to Prunera-Usach, all three of his children have worked for the Dassault company at some point in their careers.


Francisco Prunera-Usach began working for Dassault in 1970 as an airframe mechanic for the Fighter F1 prototype at the Istres flight test center. During his more than forty years with the company, he climbed the ranks to include positions as chief mechanic for several models, production safety inspector, 7X flight line manager, and as supervisor in Dassault Aircraft Services. In addition to his time in Little Rock, this Dassault veteran has worked in Istres and Merignac, France; Teteboro, New Jersey; and Wilmington, Delaware.


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Daughter Laurence worked at the Teteboro site, where she met her husband, Xavier Pons, a director of sales with Dassault Falcon Jet. Prunera-Usach’s eldest son, Stéphane, completed an internship with Dassault during his college years and now works as an engineer in Rolls Royce’s aerospace and defense branch in Germany. Pruner-Usach’s youngest son, Jerome, now senior manager of business transformation at Dassault, has worked for Dassault in Little Rock for nearly 10 years.


Francisco Prunera-Usach says he has trained many people during his tenure with Dassault, and some of those people seem to inadvertently be the closest to him. He says he never imagined that his approach to career would transfer to both his personnel and his children, but that he is pleased to see his children take up his “passion” for aviation.


HARD WORK AND A FEEL FOR THE CRAFT \


Prunera-Usach’s professional integrity does not merely emanate from the product, but from the quality of employee that he has helped train over his years with the company. His son, Jerome, speaks genuinely about his father’s work ethic.


“My dad has a philosophy that if you are working hard, you’re doing well,” Jerome Pruner-Usach says. “It is the one constant that you have power over. That is how [my father] used to approach work and it is how we inherited a sense of honor and righteousness in working hard.”


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