Dassault Falcon Service Center in Melbourne — Melbourne, Florida

Dassault's Melbourne service center was announced on October 17, 2022, not in Brevard County but at the National Business Aviation Association convention in Orlando. The EDC of Florida's Space Coast and Melbourne Orlando International Airport said that day that Dassault Falcon Jet, a subsidiary of the French maker of Falcon business jets and Rafale fighters, had picked the Space Coast for a new major maintenance facility. During negotiations the deal carried the code name Project Vista.

The announcement put numbers on the table: a capital investment of $115 million and 400 new jobs at an average annual wage of $86,120. Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey said the city welcomed the decision to invest over $100 million within Melbourne's aerospace industry cluster at the airport, and airport executive director Greg Donovan called the company the newest member of the airport's family of tenants. Dassault chief executive Eric Trappier tied the decision to demand as new models such as the Falcon 10X and Falcon 6X entered service.

As first described, the Melbourne complex was a 175,000 square-foot hangar and shop building meant to serve Falcon owners across North and South America. Space Florida's announcement said it would accommodate all current Falcon models, including the ultra-long-range Falcon 10X, could perform major maintenance and modifications on up to 18 Falcon aircraft simultaneously, and would add a 54,000-square-foot paint shop. Construction at Melbourne Orlando International Airport was expected to begin in the second quarter of 2023, with opening set for late 2024.

The deal was assembled by a group of state and local agencies. The EDC said it worked with Enterprise Florida, Space Florida and CareerSource Brevard to secure the project. In the Space Florida release, Space Florida president Frank DiBello pointed to the agency's financial toolkit, Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared W. Perdue credited state investment in airport infrastructure, and CareerSource Florida cited a nearly $30 million state investment in aviation, aerospace and manufacturing training. The dollar value of any incentive awarded to the Melbourne project was not published in these releases.

The facility opened on October 14, 2025, about a year after the late 2024 target. In its opening release, Dassault described the finished complex at Melbourne Orlando International Airport (KMLB) as 250,000 square feet, larger than the 175,000 square feet announced in 2022, and capable of major maintenance and modifications on up to 14 Falcon aircraft at the same time, compared with 18 in the original plan. The release lists the work done there as a full range of inspection, repair and overhaul, from line maintenance through C-checks, plus engineering and modification services, along with workshops, customer offices and lounges and a new 54,000 square-foot paint shop.

The ceremony brought Dassault Aviation chairman Eric Trappier, Dassault Falcon Jet chief executive Thierry Betbeze, EDC president Lynda Weatherman and Greg Donovan of the Melbourne airport together on site. A day later the EDC reported that Betbeze had called the Melbourne building the Flagship of the Americas because of its location and talent pool, and quoted Weatherman saying the facility was creating 400 full-time jobs in Brevard County. That matches the job count from the 2022 announcement.

The Melbourne announcement was issued as a state event as well as a local one. Space Florida published the news under a Tallahassee dateline, with statements from Governor Ron DeSantis, Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez, Deputy Secretary of Commerce Laura DiBella and Department of Economic Opportunity Secretary Dane Eagle alongside the EDC and the Melbourne airport. DeSantis said the facility would bring high-paying jobs to Melbourne, and DiBella said the maintenance operation would serve the local economy of Florida's Space Coast. Eagle tied the project to Florida's mechanics and aviation workforce.

Workforce agencies were part of the package from the start. CareerSource Florida president Michelle Dennard said in the Space Florida release that the statewide CareerSource network stood ready to help with recruiting, hiring and training for the Melbourne center, and CareerSource Brevard was one of the three partners the EDC credited with securing it. When the building opened in October 2025, Governor DeSantis was quoted again in Dassault's release, describing the Melbourne service center as one that would create high-quality jobs. Neither release gives a dollar figure for state or local incentives tied to the Melbourne site, so the public record for this project is the investment, job and wage commitments rather than an incentive award.

Dassault presented Melbourne as one of several new heavy maintenance sites opened in a short span. The October 2025 release lists a 2024 facility at São Paulo Catarina Executive Airport in Brazil, a 2023 heavy maintenance facility in Dubai run by the ExecuJet MRO Services unit, and a 2024 facility in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and calls Melbourne the latest expansion of a worldwide network of more than 40 service locations. Trappier said Dassault already had a large United States footprint of 2,500 employees, aircraft completions and sales.

Within that network the Melbourne building is the one meant to put service capacity closer to Falcon customers in the Americas. Both the 2022 and 2025 releases describe it as intended to serve customers across North and South America and beyond, and the 2025 release says it can handle every current Falcon model, including the in-development Falcon 10X, the largest purpose-built business jet in the line. For Melbourne, that means a Falcon heavy maintenance and paint operation on the same airfield as Embraer's assembly lines and Northrop Grumman's campus.

The airport authority lists Dassault Falcon Jet on its Land Development and Growth page as a notable tenant, alongside Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, Rockwell Collins, Embraer, Sheltair, Southeast Aerospace, Avidyne, Satcom Direct, Thales and STS Aviation Group. Its Business Opportunities page says the airport campus has a daily population of more than 20,000 individuals and an annual economic impact of more than $3 billion, figures that include the Dassault workforce after 2025.

The Dassault project also changed the mix of work at Melbourne Orlando International Airport. Embraer brought aircraft assembly and Northrop Grumman brought design and integration; the Falcon center added heavy maintenance, modification and paint for an outside fleet of business jets flown in from across the hemisphere. From the October 2022 announcement to the October 2025 ribbon cutting, the project took three years and grew from 175,000 to 250,000 square feet, according to the EDC and Dassault releases.