USA Airbus

In a major strategic announcement Airbus has confirmed it will establish a manufacturing facility at the Brookley Aeroplex in Mobile, Alabama, to assemble and deliver A320 Family aircraft.  The city of Mobile is at the far south of the State on the Gulf of Mexico.

Aircraft assembly is planned to start in 2015, with first deliveries from the Mobile facility beginning in 2016.  Airbus anticipates it will produce between 40 and 50 aircraft per year by 2018 doubling its current output.  It is already building various models of the single aisle aircraft at Toulouse, Hamburg and Tianjin (China). 

Boeing has only one source for its competing 737 model, Renton near Seattle, where production will reach 42 units per month by 2014. 

Airbus had originally offered to build a plant at Mobile to sweeten parent EADS' bid for a US$35bn military tanker contract it first won in 2008, but then lost to Boeing during a bitterly contested rematch last year.

The work ethic (and regulations) in the US are completely different to Europe and France in particular.  This new line should offer some interesting results for the EADS’ financial people. www.airbus.com

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