Biography|Marc Houalla — The Marignane Field He Directed From 2003

People treat his later Orly and Charles de Gaulle titles as the first time he ran an airport.

The first airport on the public record is this one, at Marignane.

In 2003 Marc Houalla became délégué territorial de l'aviation civile for the Provence region and director of Marseille Provence, the principal airport of the basin.

Groupe ADP's later official CV and the French biographical notices agree on that double posting.

The field sits about twenty-five kilometres northwest of Marseille, on the communes of Marignane and Vitrolles.

He had come south from Toulouse, where in 1998 the DGAC had made him director of operations for Civil Aviation South.

The Marseille years run to 2006.

In 2006 he first headed the new South-Southeast air-navigation service in the same city, then in December was named chef du SEFA at Muret.

MP2, the low-cost hall visible in later photographs, opened in September 2006, in the last months of that airport posting.

The photograph here is from February 2008, after he had already left the director's office.

The tower and the arrivals front are still the public face of the field he ran.

The job was not a courtesy title.

It was the first time a civil-aviation engineer from ENAC and HEC had to answer for a working commercial airport rather than a classroom or a navigation desk.

From Muret the next decree would send him back to Toulouse as director of the school itself.

Photo: Jarke, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (February 2008)