AIAC AND THE EXPLORERS CLUB WELCOME HOME AND CELEBRATE HUBERT SAGNIÈRES ON HIS SUCCESSFUL GLOBAL CIRCUMNAVIGATION
Pilots Hubert Sagnières and Georges Adams before their departure, January 22, 2024, Montreal.
June 5, 2024 New York, NY - The Explorers Club and AIAC join in congratulating Hubert Sagnières on the successful completion of his historic circumnavigation of the globe in a single-engine plane, The Spirit of St. Exupery. This monumental achievement was undertaken to celebrate the centennial of the first flight around the world by the crew of the Douglas Aircraft Company’s World Cruiser, The Chicago, in 1924. .
Sagnières, a distinguished Franco-Canadian businessman, philanthropist, author, and explorer, embarked on this remarkable journey from Montreal on January 22, 2024. With the flag of The Explorers Club and a part of The Chicago on board, Sagnières honored the legacy of both the historic 1924 aerial circumnavigation and the 18th and 19th-century marine expeditions of discovery.
Flying a Swiss-made Pilatus PC-12 aircraft named 'Spirit of St. Exupéry', Sagnières captured the adventurous spirit of the famed French aviator and writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The aircraft, powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 turboprop engine reliably performed throughout the journey.
Joining Sagnières on this epic voyage was co-pilot George Adam, a veteran with 10 years in the French Special Forces of the 11th Paratrooper Division and 12 years as a Test Parachutist at the French Flight Test Center.
The expedition was tracked and described on www.flightaroundtheglobe.com, the expedition’s official website, produced by the Expedition’s director of communications and marketing support, Mélissa Bilodeau, with the support from the AIAC media department.
Sagnières’ expeditions have previously spanned twenty explorations of the Canadian Arctic and more recent journeys to indigenous communities in the rainforests of the Indonesian archipelago. He is the author of Daring French Explorations: Trailblazing Adventures around the World: 1714-1854, published this year. Recognizing his achievements, the Explorers Club inducted Sagnières as a Fellow in 2023, among its highest honors.
Hubert Sagnières is the Executive Vice Chairman of EssilorLuxottica and Chairman of Essilor Internationa. EssilorLuxottica, the global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of ophthalmic lenses, frames and sunglasses, is the nineth largest company by market capitalization in France. He has also been a leading advocate for employee shareholding and corporate social responsibility. Through his extensive humanitarian efforts founding and leading multiple non-profit institutions, Sagnières has worked to improve the vision for hundreds of millions of the world’s poor. He seeks to impact over 2.7 billion people worldwide by 2050. These efforts have earned him the Legion of Honor from the President of the Republic of France in 2012.
Sponsors for the Flight Around the World Expedition included the Explorers Club with AIAC and its affiliated companies, Arnprior Aerospace, Bradford Space, Champlain Cable, Consolidated Industries, Coating Technology Company, Lenape Forged Products, SuperAlloy, Titanium Fabrication Corporation, Vital Engineered Components Company, and Vermont Aerospace Industries.
L. M. Levie, AIAC Chairman and Member of the Board of Trustees of The Explorers Club, declared, “My colleagues and I wish to warmly welcome back, safe and sound, our dear friend, Hubert Sagnières, following his spectacular flight around the world, piloting a single engine plane. His historic feat is yet another example of his stunning accomplishments as a global explorer, historian, anthropologist, businessman, humanitarian, philanthropist, and as the ‘Visionary of Vision.’ Hubert Sagnières now joins the ranks of legendary Explorers Club aviators and astronauts, such as Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindberg, Richard Branson, Bertrand Piccard, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin. We celebrate and salute him.”
For further information, please see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_World_Cruiser
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/douglas-world-cruiser-chicago/nasm_A19250008000
About Hubert Sagnières
Hubert Sagnières is the Executive Vice-Chairman of Essilor Luxottica (https://www.essilorluxottica.com/en/), the global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of ophthalmic lenses, frames and sunglasses.
He was born in 1955, spent his childhood in Algeria and completed his studies in France. He is a graduate of the École Centrale de Lille, with a degree in Economic Science and an MBA from INSEAD.
Hubert Sagnières joined Essilor in 1989 as Global Marketing Director. From 1991 to 1996, he was President of Essilor Canada, was appointed President of Essilor Laboratories of America and subsequently designated President of Essilor of America, a position he held until 2005. From 2006 to 2009, he served as Group Executive Director, first for North America and then for Europe. He became Essilor’s Chief Operating Officer and Director and was then was appointed Chief Executive Officer in 2010.
In October 2018 Essilor successfully combined with Luxottica in a $49 billion merger, to create the world leader in eyewear, Essilor Luxottica. Hubert Sagnières serves as Executive Vice Chairman of the firm, which now reflects a stock market capitalization of over $100 billion.
For decades, Sagnières’ philanthropic mission has been to help the 2.7 billion people living with uncorrected vision and to eliminate poor vision across the world by 2050, through Essilor Vision Foundation, Vision Impact Institute, Vision for Life, Vision Catalyst Fund, Eye Mitra Program, and Vision Ambassadors. For his efforts in promoting global eye care, he was awarded the Knight (Chevalier) of the Legion of Honor by Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the Republic of France in 2012.
Sagnières’ journeys as a global explorer have included twenty polar expeditions in the Canadian Arctic. In recent years, he has explored the most remote islands of the Indonesian archipelago, where he befriended and lived with the Dayak tribes of Borneo and the Mentawai people of Siberut Island.
For further information, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Sagnières
About Daring French Expeditions
Hubert Sagnières is the author of Daring French Explorations: Trailblazing Adventures around the World: 1714-1854, published in February 2024. In this work, Sagnières recounts the journeys of sixteen French explorers on their voyages around the world, witnessing their trials and tribulations encountered as they charted new routes to remote territories.
Reader sail to Tahiti with Louis-Antoine de Bougainville or to Antarctica with Jules Dumont d’Urville and learn about Russian domination of Alaska in the eighteenth century, or how the Dutch traded Manhattan to the British for the precious nutmeg plantations on a tiny Indonesian island. Beautifully illustrated with some 300 documents—including previously unpublished or rare texts, unfiltered extracts from travel journals, maps, and illustrations from centuries-old sketchbooks—readers discover these intrepid travelers and their extraordinary scientific, military, or commercial voyages, which have significantly marked the history of world exploration and contributed to our modern understanding of geography, cartography, climate change, and global cultures.
Unfiltered extracts from travel journals, original works by each explorer, and previously unpublished personal correspondence plunge readers into the heart of their adventures. These rare first-person historical accounts provide enlightening insight into their thoughts, concerns, and contemporary attitudes—touching on themes such as colonization, religion, trade, and geopolitics—with relevance that strikes the chords of modern-day issues. These rare first-person accounts provide enlightening insight into historical attitudes on themes such as colonization, religion, trade, and geopolitics—with uncanny relevance to modern-day issues.
For further information, please see:
https://www.amazon.com/Daring-French-Explorations-Trailblazing-Adventures/dp/2080428454
About AIAC
American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) is a diversified industrial group with manufacturing and distribution sites in 24 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. AIAC has acquired and grown non-core subsidiaries and divisions of Boeing, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Johnson Controls, Merck, Pfizer, Astellas, Visteon, Carlyle, Ahlstrom, Tolko, Groupe Suez, Groupe Rexel, and many other leading multinational corporations.
AIAC companies serve companies and governmental entities worldwide in all major sectors, including aviation, space, defense, automotive, truck, rail, marine, petrochemical, solar, nuclear, food, confectionary, beverage, civil engineering and infrastructure, commercial construction, mining, dredging, disaster relief, education, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. AIAC companies manufacture materials, components, assemblies, packaging, equipment, and finished products. In addition, AIAC companies are exclusive, authorized distributors of leading branded industrial and consumer products throughout Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. AIAC also is a distributor of electrical products throughout France.
Of note, AIAC purchased Boeing Canada in 2005, and has produced over 10,000 unique components for every Boeing jet plane ever since, reliably serving Boeing from manufacturing facilities in North America. A leader in ultra-high precision jet engine component manufacturing, AIAC companies produce 2,200 fan blades and blisks for each jet engine produced by GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, and Honeywell. AIAC companies produce the critical automotive wire and cable for Tesla, GM, Ford, Chrysler- Fiat, Toyota, and Nissan. In connection with its kraft paper manufacturing interests, AIAC controls and sustainably manages 22 million acres of Manitoba, Canada forestland, an area equivalent in size to the nation of Hungary.
AIAC companies actively support exploration into outer space, manufacturing critical components for launching and propelling spacecraft and satellites. AIAC customers in this sector include NASA, the European Space Agency, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Boeing. AIAC companies also lead in the design and manufacture of undersea umbilical cables for world-wide oceanographic research.
For further information, please see:
About AIAC Philanthropy
AIAC and the AIAC Foundation support a wide range of nonprofit, nonsectarian, bipartisan organizations which promote international conflict resolution, disaster relief, economic development, environmental sustainability, and exploration. The exploration-focused nonprofit organizations which they actively support include the Explorers Club, the National Geographic Society, the Royal Geographical Society, the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Space Society, and the United States Space Foundation.
In recent months, AIAC Companies have proudly served as a corporate sponsor of Hubert Sagniere’s historic circumnavigation of the earth in a single engine plane (www.flightaroundtheglobe.com).
AIAC’s other beneficiaries include the Appeal of the Nobel Peace Laureates Foundation Inc., the Asia Society, the Atlantic Council, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - Gates Philanthropy Partners, the Bretton Woods Committee, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Carter Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York, the Foreign Policy Association, the Institut Française des Relations Internationales, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Crisis Group, the International Rescue Committee, the Japan Society, the JFK School of Government of Harvard University, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the Sierra Club, and the Trilateral Commission.
For further information, see:
https://www.aiac.com/our-values
About the Explorers Club
The Explorers Club is an American-based, international, multidisciplinary professional society with the mission of promoting and supporting scientific exploration and field study on land, sea, and space. The club was founded in New York City in 1904 and has served as a meeting point for explorers and scientists worldwide. Members of the club have been the first to explore the North Pole, South Pole, Mount Everest, the Mariana Trench, and to walk on the Moon. The club's notable current members or honorees include Buzz Aldrin, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Richard Branson, James Cameron, Ray Dalio, Wendy Schmidt, and Jane Goodall. In years past, prominent members have included President Theodore Roosevelt, Sir Edmund Hillary, Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Thor Heyerdahl, Walter Cronkite, and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The Explorers Club’s historic clubhouse, at 46 East 70th Street in New York City, is a museum and monument to the “Famous Firsts,” the greatest explorers and expeditions of all time.
For further information, see: