Nearly everything appears to have gone smoothly since the Airbus assembly plant in Mobile, Alabama, started in 2015.
The A220 regional jet and the A320 family of jets, which includes the A321 at the moment, are two popular aircraft produced by the company.
A string of poor choices at the company's main rival, Boeing, a 106-year-old once-heralded competitor, has temporarily swamped it.
One of them led Airbus to buy 75% of Bombardier and move some of the A220 manufacturing from Canada to Mobile by attempting to levy tariffs on planes made in Canada.
Despite the epidemic, no one was laid off at the Mobile facility, and now there is a global shortage of aircraft.
In addition to the existing lines for the A220 and A320, Airbus said in May that it would create 1,000 new positions in Mobile to allow for the establishment of a second assembly line for the A320 family of aircraft.
With a few hundred new jobs since May, there are currently around 1,500 people employed; by 2027, 2,500 people are expected to be employed.
Daryl Taylor, vice president and general manager of the Mobile facility from its inception, stated, "That's not bad for a place that wasn't making planes seven years ago."
About 75% of the workforce is made up of local hires.
So far, Airbus has committed around $1 billion to Mobile.
One more mobile achievement was made last week.
The factory handed its 100th aircraft to Delta Air Lines, a significant client, on Thursday.
The aircraft had a Pratt & Whitney engine and was an A321neo (new engine option).
American airlines frequently refer to "upgauging," which mainly refers to the replacement of smaller narrow-bodies with larger A321s.
The A321 can seat 240 passengers when configured for Frontier Airlines, which revealed its first A321neo at a ceremony in Tampa two weeks ago. However, Delta says it will operate the aircraft with 194 passengers in three classes.
Delta typically uses A321neo aircraft for intercontinental travel.
88 of the 100 planes that Mobile has delivered to Delta are from the A320 series, and 12 are A220s.
Only 300 miles away in Atlanta, Delta's headquarters.
It makes their lives easier for them to be able to travel to Mobile and pick up both types of aircraft, according to Taylor.
The demand "has overtaken our ability in Mobile, so there are some deliveries out of Europe," Taylor said, adding that one day, all Airbus narrow-body deliveries to U.S. airlines "would be from Mobile, and so we are growing capacity."
Boeing and Airbus have been good collaborators, according to American Airlines CEO Robert Isom, who was asked about the worldwide aircraft scarcity caused by supply chain concerns on CNBC's Squawk Box last week.
They must succeed greatly for us.
Truly, we do.
For our survival, we are dependent on them.
In terms of when they deliver aircraft, he continued, "They've got to be on schedule."
To ensure that your business fulfills the promises you made, you must develop it.
They intend to do it, I know that.
Similar to how we all had to catch up after the pandemic, they must now.
About 340 planes have been supplied by Mobile to date, including about 300 from the A320 family.
According to Airbus, by 2025, 14 A220 family aircraft and 75 A320 family aircraft are expected to be produced each month globally.
In Mobile, a comparable ratio is anticipated.
In April 2016, Mobile delivered an A321 to JetBlue as its first aircraft.
Customers have included leasing firms as well as American, Allegiant, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, and JetBlue.
2019 saw the first A220 delivered to Delta.
The LMXT, a variant of the Airbus A330 that would be produced in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, could be used to build military tankers in the future.
If the Air Force chooses the aircraft over a Boeing proposal, the two companies have stated that they will construct it in Mobile and fly it to a Lockheed facility in Marietta, Georgia, for military refueling and electronic components.
With the exception of a brief hiatus in the spring of 2020, when COVID-19 initially surfaced, growth has been consistent.
The plant didn't make any deliveries in April, May, or June of that year, but "there were no months when we didn't create aircraft," Taylor claimed.
Airbus didn't fire any long-term employees during the lean months and kept constructing A220 manufacturing sites.
Every customer had resumed delivery by the end of 2020.
The development of the Mobile final assembly line and the expanding aerospace cluster that it brings about clearly generates employment and industry, according to Scott Hamilton, managing director of airline consulting firm Leeham Partners.
For American aerospace, this is good.
Hamilton did point out that Boeing still has a significant presence in the United States, as evidenced by the fact that Alaska, Southwest, and United Airlines continue to be exclusively or primarily Boeing customers. Additionally, Delta announced in July that it would be expanding its fleet by 100 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, with options for an additional 30.
Hamilton noted that Boeing was the reason for Mobile's entry into the A220 market.
The establishment of an A220 (final assembly line) in Mobile and Delta's commitment to buy the A220 from Mobile once it was operational were both motivated by the Boeing trade complaint against Bombardier, he claimed. Additionally, the C Series program was sold to Airbus as a result of the complaint.
"Boeing utterly underestimated the effect of its trade complaint.
Now, rather than competing against a weak Bombardier, it does so in the 150-seat market.
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