[1] In summer 1909, Grandjean started to realize his longtime dream to build a flying machine; the news of Blériot’s flight across the channel convinced him to leave Egypt and to return to Switzerland.

Immediately repaired, his aircraft was in August 1910 damaged again by Georges Cailler during a flight meeting in Viry, Haute-Savoie.

In December 1911 Grandjean was invited at Davos to fly above the resort; he pioneered in building ski to skid on the snow without sinking into it.

[1][2] In summer 1912, Grandjean replaced the skis by floats designed and engineered by himself, resulting in the first takeoff of a Swiss hydroplane (seaplane) on 4 August 1912.

Grandjean decided to leave for Paris in 1915 where he rapidly became a very demanded technical counsellor, got patents for more than two hundred of his own inventions and returned definitely to Switzerland in 1956.

On 10 May 1965, a monument was erected in Avenches in memory of Ernest Failloubaz, complemented by a commemorative plate reminding his collaboration with Grandjean as the birth of aviation in Switzerland.