Guillaume Faury
Chief Executive Officer
2019 – Present
7 years (current)
Key Decisions & Impact
Faury, born in Cherbourg, France in 1968, graduated from the elite Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale Superieure de l'Aeronautique et de l'Espace before starting his career as a flight-test engineer for the Eurocopter Tiger helicopter program within the French defense procurement agency DGA. He spent a decade at Eurocopter/Airbus Helicopters, four years as an R&D executive at automaker Peugeot, and then returned to run Airbus Helicopters from 2013 to 2018 before leading Airbus's commercial-aircraft division and becoming group CEO in April 2019. A qualified light-aircraft pilot and helicopter flight-test engineer with over 1,300 flying hours, he was reappointed to a further term as CEO in 2025. He also launched the ZEROe hydrogen-aircraft program targeting a 2035 entry into service, though Airbus pushed that timeline back toward the late 2040s after concluding hydrogen infrastructure and storage technology would not mature in time, while ramping A320neo-family production toward a targeted rate of 70 to 75 aircraft per month by the end of 2027 to work through an order backlog exceeding 9,000 aircraft.
Legacy
Faury was appointed CEO in April 2019, initiating a comprehensive strategic optimization program focused on A321XLR production expansion, ZEROe hydrogen propulsion research, and final assembly automation, driving the company's continued growth and margin expansion through the post-pandemic supply chain crisis.