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European planemaker Airbus has gone head-to-head with its arch-rival Boeing by establishing a $600 million final assembly plant in the US.
The facility, in Mobile, Alabama, is its first US-based production plant. It will be used to make four A320 single-aisle aircraft a month by 2018.
Toulouse-based Airbus has recorded several multi-million pound sales successes with North American airlines in recent years. The A320 family has been outselling its direct competitor, the Boeing 737, and Airbus has been struggling to meet demand from its existing final assembly plants in Hamburg. Germany, and Tianjin, China.
Fabrice Bregier said that the opening of the Mobile plant represented a historic moment that was “years in the making”.
He said: “It marks the most significant game-changing event in the US aerospace market for decades.”
Airbus has a growing presence in the US, with A320 customers including United Airlines, Delta, American Airlines, JetBlue and Frontier Airlines. Bregier said that sales would continue to grow.
He said: “The output from the Mobile plant will be swallowed by the American market.”
Bregier predicted that US airlines would buy a total of 4,700 single aisle aircraft over the next 20 years.
The physical layout of the Mobile plant is based on the company's existing A320 family assembly lines. Overall, the supply stream for systems and components will remain mostly the same.
The Albama Airbus plant receives its first delivery
Fully-equipped sections of aircraft, including the wings from the UK, will be shipped by sea and road to the plant in Mobile. Meanwhile, other major components will be packaged at Airbus' main logistics centre in Hamburg, Germany, before being sent by ship or air to the US.
Some US-origin parts will be delivered directly to the facility by road or rail.
The first fully-assembled plane will leave the Mobile plant next year. Production will then be ramped up to four aircraft per month by 2018. That figure could be boosted to eight planes a month with a “modest amount of additional capital expenditure”, said Barry Eccleston, president of Airbus Americas.
Airbus has leased additional land adjacent to the Mobile site, which could be used to expand the A320 plant.
Airbus now employs a total of 1,400 workers in the US. In addition to the new Mobile plant, it also has a design and engineering centre in Witchita, Kansas, which employs around 340 engineers carrying out design and stress work on its wings. It also a major sales and marketing office Herndon, Virginia, and a 24-hour spares centre in Ashburn, Virginia.