ExecuJet MRO Services Belgium Handles Rat-Damaged Falcon 8X, Expands Avionics Capabilities

ExecuJet MRO Services Belgium, operating from Kortrijk with three maintenance bays and 48 employees, recently completed repairs on a Dassault Falcon 8X that had suffered damage caused by a rat that had taken up residence in the aircraft. The infestation was first suspected when a crew boarding the 8X at Farnborough found that much of the catering had been consumed; security cameras confirmed a rat was responsible.

DABS personnel in Farnborough removed the animal, and initial wiring inspections were carried out there before the aircraft was ferried to Kortrijk for a scheduled 48-month inspection combined with a Starlink installation. Technicians at Kortrijk found the rat had chewed through substantial amounts of wiring insulation. Replacement insulation packets were sourced in coordination with the Teterboro parts team and fabricators in Little Rock.

The concurrent Starlink modification simplified repairs: headliners and portions of the interior already removed for the avionics upgrade allowed technicians to access and inspect the remaining structure more readily. The 48-month inspection is now essentially complete, and the aircraft is expected to leave the Kortrijk hangar shortly, fully repaired and Starlink-equipped.

Beyond the rat-damage case, Kortrijk has established a broader avionics and upgrade capability, becoming the first facility in the Eastern Hemisphere to perform an EASy IV upgrade, carried out on a Falcon 7X. The team is now prepared to install Gogo Galileo systems and is actively fitting Garmin 275 units as backup primary flight displays. The Belgium operation is also experimenting with drone-based surface mapping — in one instance a drone rapidly located pinhole lightning-strike entry and exit points, accelerating inspection and repair — and has trialled augmented reality glasses allowing remote specialists to observe live what a technician is troubleshooting on-site. ExecuJet Regional VP Matthijs Hutsebaut and General Manager Nadia Coetzee also oversee line service operations in Brussels, where staff form one of the company's AOG response teams; ExecuJet MRO Services Europe is one of 60 worldwide service locations in the ExecuJet network.

The Falcon 8X case is an example of how unplanned damage and scheduled work can be folded into a single hangar visit rather than handled as separate events. Wiring inspections that would otherwise require pulling headliners and interior panels became faster and cheaper because that access already existed for the Starlink installation, and coordination across Teterboro's parts team and fabricators in Little Rock kept the insulation sourcing from becoming a bottleneck.

This is how business jet MRO economics generally work when a facility carries multiple capabilities under one roof: avionics retrofits, structural inspections and repair work draw on the same open airframe, and a shop that can sequence them well turns downtime that would otherwise stack into downtime that overlaps. Kortrijk's move into EASy IV upgrades, Gogo Galileo readiness, Garmin 275 installations, drone-based surface mapping and augmented-reality remote support all point to the same logic — building a wider service menu so more of an aircraft's needs get addressed in one visit.

What remains to be seen is how quickly these newer tools — drone mapping and AR-assisted remote troubleshooting — move from trial use into standard practice across ExecuJet's other 60 network locations, and whether operators start requesting them proactively rather than encountering them as a byproduct of an unrelated repair.