FlightSafety International chairman, president and CEO Bruce Whitman was awarded the Médaille de l'Aéronautique from France last week. Bertrand Lortholary, consul général of France, presented the medal to Whitman in New York on April 26.

The medal is awarded to military personnel and civilians of France and to foreign nationals for outstanding accomplishments related to the field of aeronautics. Previous recipients include Dassault Group chairman and CEO Serge Dassault, Airbus senior v-p for engineering Bernard Ziegler and Steve Fossett, the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon.

FlightSafety’s training services to the aviation industry in France trace back to the mid-1960s, when it was named the factory authorized training provider for the Dassault Falcon Jet. FlightSafety established the Centre D’Instruction Falcon in 1975 as a joint venture with Avions, Marcel Dassault-Breguet Aviation, and opened a Learning Center in Vélizy-Villacoublay, France, in 1976. Later relocated to Paris-Le Bourget, the center provides training to more than 2,500 pilots and maintenance technicians each year.