The Airbus final assembly line at Mobile’s Brookley Aeroplex has handed over its 50th A320 aircraft, a milestone reached less than two years after the plant delivered its very first jet and one that plant leaders say cements the facility’s place as a fixture of the region’s manufacturing base.
Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines took possession of the 50th A320 in a delivery announced in mid-December, and the achievement was marked with a celebration at the Mobile plant attended by Airbus Americas leadership and members of Delta’s delivery team. The facility delivered its first U.S.-built A320 in 2016, and reaching the 50-jet mark in barely two years reflects a steady ramp-up in production that has become one of the defining local business stories of the past year.
Allan McArtor, who chairs Airbus Americas, said the milestone belongs as much to the wider supply chain as it does to the Mobile workforce itself.
“The 50th delivery is a real point of pride not only for our team here in Mobile, but also for tens of thousands of employees from the hundreds of U.S. suppliers that contribute to these aircraft,” McArtor said in a statement. “We said in 2012 that we were going to build Airbus aircraft in the U.S. for our U.S.-based customers. We delivered the first aircraft in 2016, and today we stand here celebrating the 50th. We’ve met our originally announced schedule, and we’ve fulfilled the commitment we made to our customers, our suppliers across the country and this Gulf Coast community.”
Daryl Taylor, the Airbus U.S. manufacturing facility’s vice president and general manager, credited the plant’s roughly 600 direct and indirect employees for hitting the target on schedule.
“Team Mobile’s hard work and dedication have brought us to this milestone,” Taylor said. “We’ve built a great team who together are building great aircraft, meeting challenges head-on and continually seeking ways to improve.”
Behind the statement is a workforce made up largely of local hires. Company officials say 85 percent of employees at the Mobile site come from Alabama, Mississippi or Florida, and that 67 percent of those workers live in Mobile or Baldwin counties. About a third of the plant’s employees are military veterans.
Among them is Ryanne Dedeaux, a quality inspector on the final assembly line who moved to the Spanish Fort area after leaving the U.S. Navy. Her job involves inspecting aircraft components throughout the day and coordinating what the plant calls “rework” whenever an issue turns up on the line.
“I just inspect anything that’s coming up throughout the day,” Dedeaux said. “That’s basically it, and when stuff hits the wall, I’m there. I’m never bored.”
Dedeaux, who grew up on the Mississippi coast, said there is a particular satisfaction in watching a European aerospace giant build something of that scale in south Alabama.
“I feel honored just being a part of it,” she said. “Just being in a little country state — Alabama — and a European company coming here. Seeing the folks come together to build something massive, something great — it’s just breathtaking.”
Dean Smith, a mechanic who attaches wings to each jet as it moves down the line, grew up in Theodore and now lives in Mobile. He said it’s been an adjustment seeing his workplace discussed in the news.
“It’s pretty cool,” Smith said. “It’s different to hear about your job in the news like that. It’s cool to know you’ve made a contribution to it when you see it out on the flightline.”
The 50th-jet milestone caps a year in which the Mobile facility also hit Rate 4, meaning the line can now turn out four A320-family aircraft each month. Airbus Communications Director Kristi Tucker said reaching that production rate by the end of 2017 had been the plan since the plant broke ground.
“We are very much on schedule as outlined from the beginning,” Tucker said. “We’ve achieved Rate 4 as planned.”
While Delta received the 50th aircraft, the Mobile line has also delivered jets to Spirit Airlines, JetBlue and American Airlines. Tucker said the facility expects to add three more airline customers in 2018 as it works toward a total of 11 U.S.-based customers. The plant currently produces four aircraft a month but, given its backlog of orders, has the physical capacity to build up to eight a month if Airbus decides to expand output, according to Tucker.
That backlog is substantial. Airbus’s global order book lists more than 5,479 single-aisle aircraft awaiting delivery, including 467 for North American customers as of last November. Worldwide, the company has logged more than 13,353 orders and 7,874 deliveries of those jets; in North America the tally stands at 1,587 orders and 1,120 deliveries.
Individual airline order books illustrate how much work remains. Delta has ordered 122 A321 aircraft and taken delivery of 29. JetBlue has ordered 61 A321s and received 48. Spirit’s order for 50 A320neo aircraft has yielded 42 deliveries so far, while American Airlines’ order for 100 A321neo jets has yet to see a single delivery. Frontier Airlines has 19 A319neo aircraft on order with none delivered, plus 62 A320neo jets on order with 13 delivered. Hawaiian Airlines has received one of the 16 A320neo aircraft it has ordered, and Allegiant Air has taken 10 of its 13 A320neo jets. Tucker said the Mobile plant, while built primarily to serve U.S. airlines, can ship an aircraft anywhere in the world if the need arises.
The delivery milestone comes amid a second major development for the Brookley campus. In October, Airbus announced a partnership with Canadian manufacturer Bombardier to build the C Series aircraft family, an agreement that is expected to result in a second final assembly line in Mobile serving U.S. customers. Airbus acquired a 50.01 percent stake in the C Series Aircraft Limited Partnership, with Bombardier and Investissement Québec retaining 31 percent and 19 percent shares, respectively.
Tucker said the C Series jets will require their own assembly space separate from the existing A320 line, since the current Mobile facility’s tooling and jigs were designed specifically for A320-family production. In a statement following the announcement, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson praised the partnership, saying it would create jobs and diversify manufacturing operations at the Brookley Aeroplex.
Inside the existing plant, the process of turning raw components into a finished jet is a highly choreographed one. Major component assemblies — the front and rear fuselage sections, the horizontal and vertical tailplane, and the wings — arrive in Mobile from Airbus’s manufacturing operations in Hamburg, Germany. Once in Mobile, the two fuselage sections are joined with roughly 3,000 rivets before the aircraft is lifted by an overhead crane and moved to the station where wings and landing gear are attached, a step Tucker described as one of the most intricate in the entire process because it’s the point at which the structure officially becomes an airplane.
From there, the aircraft is fitted with galleys, lavatories and cabin interiors before receiving final tests and paint, handled with help from aviation coatings company MAAS Aviation, which Tucker said has grown its own local presence significantly since partnering with Airbus. After painting, each jet moves to the flightline for ground testing followed by a flight test that typically lasts around four and a half hours before the aircraft is turned over for customer acceptance and delivery. At the current Rate 4 pace, Tucker said, an aircraft moves to the next station in the process roughly once every five days.
For employees like Dedeaux and Smith, the milestone deliveries are a tangible marker of how far the operation has come since Airbus broke ground on the Brookley site earlier in the decade — and, with a growing order backlog and a second assembly line on the horizon, a sign of more work to come for the Gulf Coast’s aerospace workforce.