Aérospatiale in the context of "Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin"

Airbus SE (/ˈɛərbʌs/ AIR-buss; French: [ɛʁbys] ; German: [ˈɛːɐ̯bʊs] ; Spanish: [ˈejɾβus]) is a European aerospace corporation. While the company's primary business is the design and manufacture of commercial aircraft, it also operates separate divisions for Defence and Space and Helicopters. Airbus has long been the world's leading helicopter manufacturer and, in 2019, emerged as the world's largest manufacturer of airliners.

Airbus originated from Airbus Industrie GIE, a consortium of European aerospace companies established in 1970 to produce a wide-body aircraft to compete with American-built airliners. In 2000, the consortium's parent firms—Aérospatiale-Matra of France, DASA of Germany, and CASA of Spain—merged to form the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), which later acquired full ownership of Airbus Industrie. EADS rebranded as Airbus SE in 2015. Reflecting its multinational origins, the company operates offices and assembly plants in France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom, along with more recent additions in Canada, Malaysia, the United States, Morocco, and India.

ATR (French: Avions de Transport Régional, Italian: Aerei da Trasporto Regionale, lit. 'Regional Transport Airplanes') is a Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer headquartered in Blagnac, France, a suburb of Toulouse. The company was founded in 1981 as a joint venture (known as an Economic Interest Group or GIE under French law) between Aérospatiale of France (now Airbus) and Aeritalia (now Leonardo) of Italy. Its main products are the ATR 42 and ATR 72 aircraft. ATR has sold more than 1,700 aircraft and has over 200 operators in more than 100 countries.

The Air-sol moyenne portée (ASMP; lit. 'Medium-Range Air-to-Surface') is a French nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile manufactured by MBDA France. In French nuclear doctrine, it serves what is referred to as a "pre-strategic" deterrence role. It is intended to be the ultimate "warning shot" prior to the full-scale employment of the strategic nuclear weapons arming the Triomphant-class ballistic missile submarines. The missile's development was undertaken by Aérospatiale's missile systems division, whose assets are now part of MBDA.

The ASMP entered service in May 1986. The development of an upgraded version, the ASMP-A, was launched in 1997 and service entry occurred in 2009. In 2016, yet another modernization program, the ASMPA-R, was launched. The first firing test of the ASMPA-R took place in December 2021 and the second in March 2022.

The Airbus Helicopters H125 (previously the Eurocopter AS350) Écureuil, or Squirrel, is a single-engine light utility helicopter designed and originally manufactured by the French corporation Aérospatiale, later by Eurocopter, which became Airbus Helicopters. In North America, the H125 is marketed as the AStar. The AS355 Ecureuil 2 is a twin-engine variant, marketed in North America as the TwinStar.

The Eurocopter EC130 is a derivative of the AS350 airframe and is considered by the manufacturer to be part of the Écureuil single-engine family.

Ariane is a series of European civilian expendable launch vehicles for space launch use. The name comes from the French spelling of the mythological character Ariadne. France first proposed the Ariane project and it was officially agreed upon at the end of 1973 after discussions between France, Germany and the UK. The project was Western Europe's second attempt at developing its own launcher following the unsuccessful Europa project. The Ariane project was code-named L3S (the French abbreviation for third-generation substitution launcher).

The European Space Agency (ESA) charged Aérospatiale (whose former assets now form Airbus) with the development of all Ariane launchers and of the testing facilities, while Arianespace handled production, operations and marketing after its creation in 1980. Arianespace launches Ariane rockets from the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou in French Guiana. As a result of the merger in 2000 that founded Airbus, the new corporation's space branch and subsequently its subsidiary with Safran, ArianeGroup, took over the duties of the defunct Aérospatiale.

Ariane 5 is a retired European heavy-lift space launch vehicle operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in French Guiana. It was used to deliver payloads into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), low Earth orbit (LEO) or further into space. The launch vehicle had a streak of 82 consecutive successful launches between 9 April 2003 and 12 December 2017. In development since 2014, Ariane 6, a direct successor system was first launched in 2024.

The system was designed as an expendable launch vehicle by the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), the French government's space agency, in cooperation with various European partners. Despite not being a direct derivative of its predecessor launch vehicle program, it was classified as part of the Ariane rocket family. Aérospatiale, and later ArianeGroup, was the prime contractor for the manufacturing of the vehicles, leading a multi-country consortium of other European contractors. Ariane 5 was originally intended to launch the Hermes spacecraft, and thus it was rated for human space launches.

The Gauche Plurielle (French for Plural Left) was a left-wing coalition in France, composed of the Socialist Party (Parti socialiste or PS), the French Communist Party (Parti communiste français or PCF), the Greens, the Left Radical Party (Parti radical de gauche or PRG), and the Citizens' Movement (Mouvement des citoyens or MDC). Succeeding Alain Juppé's conservative government, the Plural Left governed France from 1997 to 2002. It was another case of cohabitation between rival parties at the head of the state and of the government (Jacques Chirac as president and Lionel Jospin as prime minister). Following the failure of the left in the 2002 legislative election, it was replaced by another conservative government, this time headed by Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

The Plural Left government initiated several reforms, including the CMU social welfare program for indigents, the PACS civil union law, the 35 hours workweek, the creation of the FNAEG DNA database, but also several privatizations (France Télécom, GAN, Thomson Multimédia, Air France, Eramet, Aérospatiale, Autoroutes du sud de la France). It also passed the SRU Law forcing each commune to have a 20% quota of housing projects, the 15 June 2000 Guigou law on presumption of innocence, the Taubira Law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity, and the LSQ law concerning security. Furthermore, Jospin's government carried out a partial regularization of undocumented immigrants.

The Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm Bo 105 is a light, twin-engine, multi-purpose helicopter developed by Bölkow of Ottobrunn, West Germany. It was the first light twin-engine helicopter in the world, and the first rotorcraft that could perform aerobatic maneuvers such as inverted loops. The Bo 105 features a hingeless rotor system, a pioneering innovation in helicopters when it was introduced into service in 1970. Production of the Bo 105 began at the then-recently merged Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB).

The main production facilities for producing the Bo 105 were located in Germany and Canada; due to the level of export sales encountered, additional manufacturing lines were set up in Spain, Indonesia, and the Philippines. MBB, acquired by DASA in 1989, merged its helicopter division with that of France's Aérospatiale to form Eurocopter in 1992 (rebranded Airbus Helicopters since). The latter continued production of the type until 2001. The Bo 105 was formally replaced in Eurocopter's product range by the newer Eurocopter EC135. By the close of production, over 1400 had been produced in Germany, and with license production 1640 had been produced in total.