Dassault Falcon 10X Completes Maiden Flight

June 25, 2026

The Falcon 10X takes off on its maiden flight.

Dassault Aviation’s Falcon 10X has moved from rollout to flight test, completing a two-hour, 30-minute maiden flight from Bordeaux-Mérignac on June 19, 2026, and giving the company its first opportunity to evaluate the clean-sheet ultra-long-range business jet in the air.

The first test aircraft departed runway 23 at 11:10 a.m. with test pilot Sébastien Dupont de Dinechin and copilot Fabrice Dougnac at the controls, initially assessing handling qualities and aircraft systems at 15,000 feet before retracting the landing gear and movable surfaces, climbing to 40,000 feet, and accelerating to Mach 0.82. It returned to Bordeaux-Mérignac at 1:40 p.m., marking the start of a certification campaign that will be joined by a second test aircraft and a third aircraft configured with a full interior for systems, cabin functionality, and reliability work.

Beyond the milestone flight, the Falcon 10X is notable for how much new engineering Dassault has concentrated into a single business-jet platform. The aircraft was developed as a 100-percent new design rather than a derivative, with a target range of 7,500 nautical miles, a maximum operating speed of Mach 0.925, and a cabin cross-section measuring 9 feet, 1 inch wide by 6 feet, 8 inches high.

An in-flight look inside the flight deck of the new Falcon 10X with the test pilots.

Dassault cites a cabin volume of 2,780 cubic feet and a 53-foot, 10-inch cabin length, enabled by new aerodynamic shaping around the nose, fuselage fairing, and tail, as well as a new high-aspect-ratio composite wing produced at a dedicated facility in Anglet, France. The engineering challenge is less about cabin size alone than about preserving business-jet field performance, high-altitude capability, and airport compatibility while carrying the structural and systems weight of a substantially larger airframe.

Power comes from two Rolls-Royce Pearl 10X turbofans, each delivering more than 18,000 pounds of thrust. The engine combines the Advance2 core with a high-performance low-pressure system and includes an ultra-low-emissions ALM combustor compatible with 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel. Rolls-Royce says the Pearl 10X program has accumulated more than 4,000 test hours across the Advance2 demonstrator and Pearl 10X configuration, including a six-month Boeing 747 flying testbed campaign with more than 25 flights and 36,000 nautical miles flown. For the Falcon 10X, that propulsion package is intended to support ultra-long-range missions while providing enough thrust margin for high-speed cruise and access to the kinds of airports used by large-cabin business jets.

The aircraft’s systems architecture draws heavily on Dassault’s experience with digital flight controls. The Falcon 10X uses a Digital Flight Control System with safety functions designed to protect against inadvertent upsets and other hazards, including automatic recovery from unusual attitudes, automatic terrain avoidance, and automatic windshear recovery. A single “Smart Throttle” controls both engines, while an advanced head-up display and other fighter-derived flight-deck features are intended to reduce pilot workload and improve situational awareness during demanding phases of flight. In technical terms, the Falcon 10X is an example of the broader movement in business aviation toward higher levels of flight-envelope protection, integrated engine control, and automation normally associated with newer military and commercial transport aircraft.

The cabin technologies are also linked to engineering rather than simply comfort. The wide fuselage supports a modular four-zone layout in which sections can be reconfigured for different mission requirements, while 38 large windows increase daylight distribution across the cabin. Dassault’s environmental-control approach emphasizes even temperature distribution, regulated humidity, ozone and pollutant filtration, and a low cabin altitude to reduce fatigue on long missions. Those features matter because ultra-long-range aircraft increasingly compete not only on published range, but on how well their structures, pressurization, acoustics, airflow, and thermal systems support passengers and crews during flights that may approach the limits of duty-day endurance.

The next phase of the program will determine how those design targets translate into certified performance. With one aircraft now flying, another nearing completion, and a third dedicated largely to cabin and systems validation, Dassault is moving the Falcon 10X from static claims into flight-test data. For the industry, the program is a useful technical marker: a large-cabin business jet built around a new composite wing, new Rolls-Royce engines, expanded fly-by-wire protections, and an avionics philosophy that continues to pull business aviation flight decks closer to the automation and safety logic of advanced military and transport aircraft.

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