The wind had been blowing violently for several days, but on March 7, 2021, the sky was clear over the seaside resort of Deauville in Normandy. The day before, the sun had just set when Olivier Dassault arrived at around 6:30 pm aboard his personal helicopter, an Airbus AS350 B that he was learning to fly with an old friend and seasoned pilot. Curious onlookers watched the aircraft land almost vertically and a little too close to a clump of trees, where less than a meter from a large ash tree on a friend's property on the heights of Touques, a seaside town in Calvados, it remained until Dassault was ready to leave.

The eldest of the family's heirs loved flying his own planes. At 69, it was his way of embodying his prestigious ancestry, despite not captaining the flagship of the French aeronautics industry, created in 1929 by his grandfather Marcel Dassault. When he would go to the Paris Air Show, with his bomber jacket, tinted aviator glasses and the name Dassault, which carries its own legend, he could create the illusion of being something of a boss, and forget what his father, Serge Dassault and former student of the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique, constantly rubbed into him during his youth: "You're not a great engineer because you didn't go to the X," using Polytechnique's nickname.

However, to enjoy manning an aircraft produced by Dassault Aviation, Olivier Dassault first had to overcome the tenacious airsickness that would hit him with every air pocket. At the age of 24, when he was finishing his training as an engineer and pilot officer at the Air Force school, his instructor, who watched him turning green as soon as he took off, said by way of consolation: "Well... you'll make a good reservist." And the heir would recount time and again how he had then pointed to the badge on his chest: "Didn't you see the name written here? I'm going to be a pilot!"

'So, you don't work?'

By early 2021, he was close to his personal goal. A few more hours of dual-control flying and this debonair jack-of-all-trades would be able to add a helicopter pilot's license to those he already held for various types of aircraft. An extra skill to embellish the long list he had written of himself on his own blog: "A politician and entrepreneur, he is also an experienced pilot, a sought-after photographer and a renowned composer."

The eldest of the Dassault children was not planning to linger in Normandy on March 7. Since his father's death three years before of a heart attack, which he suffered at the age of 93 in his office on the Champs-Elysées, he could have felt free to occupy his time as he wished. Although he had always led the privileged life of a wealthy heir – sumptuous offices, sports cars and hunting in the Sologne forests, with music and photography as hobbies – during Serge Dassault's lifetime, he would find himself lying, as did his three siblings, Laurent, Thierry and Marie-Hélène, about stolen weekends in the sun, just to avoid hearing his father's withering contempt: "Do you not work?"

You have 86.39% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.