We replaced AC Dismantling's Elementor site with a fast Astro site in French and English, run from a headless WordPress CMS, that explains a five-step aircraft end-of-life process and turns visitors into quote and parts requests.
We designed and built a new website for AC Dismantling, France's aircraft recycling centre in Bordeaux and Pau. It is a static Astro site with real French and English versions of every page, and the team edits the content in a headless WordPress CMS. We migrated the old WordPress and Elementor content, set up the hosting, and built two request flows, a 24-hour quote and a parts list request, that sit one click away on every page.
AC Dismantling takes aircraft at the end of their life and gives them a next one. It decontaminates, deconstructs and dismantles general, business, military and light aircraft, plus drones, and returns parts and strategic materials to the industry. Its customers are operators, owners, airports and defence programmes, and its partners include Dassault Aviation, Daher and GIFAS.
The old website did not match that work. It was a WordPress site built with Elementor on the Neve theme. Pages were heavy and slow to change, and the English version came from GTranslate, a machine translation on top of the French pages. For a company that wants to be the European reference in aircraft recycling, and that talks to buyers in Dubai and Geneva, a machine-translated site sends the wrong signal.
The brief was a new site in two real languages that explains a technical, regulated process in plain terms, shows the proof (certifications, figures, partners, news), and makes it easy to ask for a quote or a parts list. The team also needed to edit news, figures and pages without a developer.
We started from the questions an aircraft owner asks: what happens to my aircraft, which aircraft do you take, how do you protect confidentiality, and what do I get at the end. Each answer became a page or a section, in both languages, and each page ends with a way to act.
We built the site with Astro, so every page is pre-rendered HTML. The homepage loads in 34 requests and 551 KB, with 53 KB of JavaScript for the menu, the contact drawer and the partner slider. There is no page builder in the browser.
The content lives in WordPress, which the team already knows. Astro reads it at build time, so editors keep a familiar admin while visitors get a static site. News, figures and pages change without a developer.
French and English are separate pages with their own copy, not a translation layer. A switch in the header moves between them, and each page tells search engines which language version it is with hreflang tags.
Two forms open in a drawer from anywhere on the site: "Get a quote in 24h" for an aircraft to retire, and "Request the parts list" for buyers, with the aircraft type and ATA chapters. A visitor never has to look for the contact page.
AC Dismantling is French, but its market is not. Business jets come from owners across Europe, the company exhibits at the Dubai Airshow and EBACE, and partners such as Dassault Aviation and Daher work in English every day. On the old site, English was a GTranslate layer on top of the French pages. It read like a machine, and it could not be edited.
On the new site, French and English are two sets of real pages with their own copy. The homepage says "L’aviation, plus durable. Un aéronef à la fois." in French and "Aviation, more sustainable. One aircraft at a time." in English. Calls to action, form labels, the menu and the cookie settings are translated as well, so a visitor never drops back into the other language halfway through a request.
A FR / EN switch in the header moves between the two versions. Each page declares its language and its other version with hreflang tags, so search engines can send French and English searchers to the right page.
Aircraft recycling is a regulated, technical job, and most visitors have never seen it done. So the site explains it as one solution in five numbered steps: decontamination, deconstruction, dismantling, upcycling and Services +.
Each step says what happens and what it produces. Decontamination removes hydrocarbons and fluids, vents tanks, removes asbestos and radionuclides and defuses pyrotechnics. Deconstruction takes off the high-value components first: engines, electronics, landing gear and flight controls. Dismantling separates and sorts the materials on the secured site. Upcycling gives everything a destination: parts for sale, raw materials to foundries, residual waste recovered. Services + closes the file with a mass balance, a CO₂ assessment and the de-registration of the aircraft.
The "What we do" page adds the aircraft families (general, business, military and light aviation, plus drones and UAVs), the limits and the confidentiality rules. An owner can see, before the first call, whether AC Dismantling takes their aircraft and what they will get at the end.
Traceability is the main promise AC Dismantling makes, so it has its own page. Every project is documented end to end, and every part is traced from manufacture to removal from the aircraft.
The page publishes the figures from the first operations, Q2 2026: a 96.4 % material recovery rate, 25 t of materials processed, 5.4 t CO₂-eq avoided on aluminium, 5 material streams returned and 43 aircraft, drones and thrusters. These are AC Dismantling's own operating figures, and the team updates them in the CMS as new projects close.
The Sustainability page explains how a project is closed: a mass balance, a CO₂ assessment and the de-registration file. Each item has the document that closes it, so a customer knows what paperwork to expect.
The site has two kinds of visitors who are ready to act. One has an aircraft to retire. The other needs parts. Each one has a request flow that opens in a drawer over the current page, so nobody has to leave the page to find a form.
"Get a quote in 24h" asks for the contact details, the company, the country and what the visitor needs, with "Retire and dismantle an aircraft" ready as the first option. "Request the parts list" is for buyers of serviceable parts: it asks for the aircraft type and the parts or ATA chapters they want, and AC Dismantling matches them to what is in stock.
Both buttons are in the header, in the mobile menu and at the end of the key pages. The announcement bar above the navigation says the same thing in one line: a quote within 24 hours.
A buyer who gives you a fighter jet or a fleet of drones wants proof first. The company page shows the approvals AC Dismantling holds today, the AFCI A2 weapons certification, the bonded warehouse and inward processing approval and the ProTarmac label, and the two it is working towards, EASA Part 145 and EMAR 145.
Prizes and programme selections have their own section, with a clear note that they are not certifications. The partners page groups the ecosystem, from Dassault Aviation and Airbus Développement to GIFAS, Brangeon, Suez and the training campuses of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. An FAQ answers the questions owners ask most: which aircraft, what if it cannot fly, how confidentiality works, and whether recovered parts are for sale.
We built the front end with Astro. Every page is pre-rendered, so the browser gets finished HTML and only the JavaScript it needs: the menu, the request drawers, the partner slider and the cookie settings. The homepage loads in 34 requests and 551 KB.
The content is in a headless WordPress. The team edits news, events, figures and pages in an admin it already knows, and Astro builds the site from it. News and events, from the Dubai Airshow to the Dassault Aviation partnership, are published from the CMS and filtered on the page by type.
We migrated the content from the old Elementor site, set up the hosting and look after the site. The cookie banner lets visitors choose necessary, audience and marketing cookies separately. Search work continues after launch.
A site in two real languages that explains the work, shows the proof and asks for the next step.
English-speaking operators, brokers and partners now read copy written for them, page by page, instead of a GTranslate layer over the French site.
Decontamination, deconstruction, dismantling, upcycling and Services + are shown as five numbered steps, with what each step removes and produces. The aircraft families and limits (30 tonnes empty weight in flying condition, any size once non-airworthy) are stated plainly.
Certifications and the approvals in progress, prizes, partners, press and the first-operations figures each have a home, so a buyer can check AC Dismantling before the first call.
With WordPress as the CMS, the team publishes news, events and updated figures itself. We host the site and look after it.
