Guy Tardieu takes over from Jean-Marc de Raffin Dourny at the controls of OSAC

A new page is turning at OSAC, the Organisme pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile. Guy Tardieu took over from Jean-Marc de Raffin Dourny on 30th January during a lunch organized at the Aéro-Club de France (AéCF), an event which brought together OSAC's 150 employees and numerous personalities from the aviation world.

Jean-Marc de Raffin Dourny had been at the head of OSAC since it was created in 2010, the date when the body, a subsidiary of the Apave group, had won the call for tenders from the DGAC to carry out civil aviation technical inspection missions on behalf of the DSAC (the Civil Aviation Safety Department). In 2016, the DGAC renewed the body's airworthiness monitoring missions in France until 2022. This is a specific French arrangement which is currently being observed by several countries, notably in Europe.

To this end, OSAC issues, suspends and removes approval from production, maintenance, airworthiness management and maintenance training bodies. It also issues aircraft airworthiness documents and grants aviation mechanics' licences in France. It should be remembered that OSAC had taken over from GSAC, the economic interest grouping created in 1993, whose partners at the time were the DGAC, Bureau Veritas and Egis Avia.

OSAC will maintain heading

Guy Tardieu is a connoisseur of French air transport and its technical aspects. He also knows OSAC's activities well as he took part in its strategic committee. While he is already talking about a certain degree of continuity at the head of OSAC, he explains that there are also many challenges to be met and certain weak points to be corrected. In particular, he quotes the surge of new regulatory steps, the acceleration in moving from a simple regulatory conformity logic to an RBO (risk based) type logic, and the changing areas of competence (drones, airport activities, cyber-security, predictive maintenance process and so on).

After graduating from ENSAE Sup'Aéro in June 1972, Guy Tardieu joined Air France in October 1973 as a Maintenance Engineer on the Boeing 747-100. A few months later, he was appointed to the position of Deputy Division Manager for 747 Minor Maintenance works. In September 1976, he took charge of the subdivision that covered Orly airport based line mechanics. Guy Tardieu was then seconded by Air France to Tripoli as Technical Director of Libyan Arab Airlines from 1978 to 1982.

He then continued his career at Air France as Head of the Line Maintenance Division, then Head of the Programme Development Department and Economy and Programme Sub-Director at the Programmes Department. He took charge of Air France's operations control department between 1996 and 2001, then joined Jean-Cyril Spinetta as Chief of Staff and Director of External Relations for the Air France-KLM group, before becoming Corporate Quality and Conformity Director from 2009. Finally, Guy Tardieu was appointed General Delegate of the FNAM (Fédération Nationale de l'Aviation Marchande - National Commercial Aviation Federation) in April 2012, where he has been defending the interests of the French fleet until the present day.