A new commander for the flottille 31F

After studying at the Prytanée national militaire de La Flèche, Lieutenant Commander Romain Champagne de Labriolle entered the Ecole Navale in 2006. At the end of his officer training on the helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc, he chose to serve in the force de l'aéronautique navale and qualified as a naval aviation helicopter pilot in June 2013. He joined the public service and rescue site of the flottille 35F based at Le Touquet, as a co-pilot on the Dauphin, and took part in several operations as part of State action at sea. Assigned in September 2014 to the flottille 34F at the BAN de Lanvéoc, he carried out a mission in the North Atlantic as an operational pilot on the WG13 Lynx before joining the following summer the detachment of the flottille 34F based in Hyères, where he served for three years as assistant and then head of detachment. On this occasion, he participated in numerous missions in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean on board the anti-submarine frigates Montcalm and Jean de Vienne, including the Arromanche III mission. He qualified as an operational helicopter commander in June 2017. Upon the closure of the detachment in the summer of 2018, he joined the amphibious helicopter carrier Mistral as deputy aviation commander and participated twice in the Corymbe mission in the Gulf of Guinea as well as the Jeanne d'Arc 2020 mission, which was deployed in the midst of the Covid crisis. Assigned in September 2020 to the flottille 31F, he qualified as an operational helicopter commander on the Caïman Marine in January 2022. Embarked that year on the multi-mission frigate Languedoc, he was deployed in the Mediterranean as part of an American Carrier Strike Group. He became the second-in-command of the flottille 31F the following summer, then of the flottille 33F in Lanvéoc the following year. He has a total of 1,900 flight hours. Originally from Laval, he is married and has three children. • The BAN d'Hyères is one of the four BAN of the Marine nationale. The only BAN on the Mediterranean coast, it covers 270 hectares and hosts 1,600 people. Currently, it hosts three helicopter flottilles (31F, 35F, 36F) and a detachment of the flottille 32F. The flottille 31F operates 6 Caïman Marine type helicopters. A multi-mission helicopter designed to be embarked on surface vessels of the Marine nationale, the Caïman Marine is used for multiple missions: anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, maritime surveillance, sea rescue, and also for transporting authorities or equipment.