The first American-built Airbus, an A321 for JetBlue, won’t roll out until 2016, but the gears are in motion to bring the European-built sections to Mobile that will mark the start of a new era in U.S. aviation history.
This summer a shipment from Hamburg, Germany, will arrive at the Port of Mobile with large aircraft components. The cargo, two fuselage sections, wings and tail assemblies, will have traveled some 5,000 miles over road, land and sea to make history. They’ll become the first Airbus passenger jet made in America.
The shipment in June will have five major components: rear fuselage, forward fuselage, wings, vertical tail plane and horizontal tail plane. The largest piece, a 34-by-70-foot fuselage section, weighs some 28 tons, more than four adult elephants. But there’s much more that will go into the first plane.
“Thousands of individual parts will come into Mobile from a global supply base by air, sea and land,” according to Airbus, with many of parts, systems and components coming from U.S. suppliers, including possibly the engines.
The components that will be shipped from Hamburg in May are built at various locations in Europe from smaller components from all over the world. The wing assemblies, for instance, are made in Broughton in Wales, using smaller systems such as stringers (material joining wing and fuselage) and ribs (the wing’s skeletal, inner backbone) made elsewhere.
Although major sections are built in Europe, that belies the fact that some 42 percent of Airbus’ aircraft-related spending on components is with U.S. suppliers. It buys more parts, tooling and other material from the United States than from any other country.
In fact, Airbus is the largest export customer for the United States aerospace industry. Since 1990 it has spent $154 billion with hundreds of U.S. suppliers in more than 40 states. In 2013 alone, it spent more than $14.4 billion with U.S. companies. The list includes Alcoa, Eaton, GE, Goodrich, Hamilton Sundstrand, Honeywell, Northrop Grumman, PPG, Pratt & Whitney, Rockwell Collins and more.
The shipment in June is just the beginning. There will be about one shipment of large components per month, but that will ramp up over time. By 2018, Airbus anticipates the Mobile Assembly Line will be producing up to 50 planes annually.
Currently, Airbus plans to use lift on/lift off – or lo/lo vessels, carriers outfitted with cranes, to load, transport and unload the components. It doesn’t rule out using roll on/roll off vessels or ro/ro’s, which would entail outfitting components with wheels in order to roll them on and off, in the future.
Components arriving by lo/lo will be unloaded at the State Docks. The Alabama State Port Authority, which, thanks in part to improvements such as heavy-lifting cranes installed several years ago in anticipation of the ThyssenKrupp steel plant, spent relatively little to prepare for arrival of plane components. Port Authority Director Jimmy Lyons says about $600,000 went into elevating a single rail crossing to accommodate vehicles that will carry the components. That, essentially, was all the preparation needed on the port’s end.
Components will be stored for a few hours or a few days at the state docks before being transported by truck to a 3,570-square-foot Airbus hangar at the Mobile Aeroplex. The components will not gather dust in the hangar.
“The intent is to not store anything for any length of time,” Airbus spokeswoman Kristi Tucker said. “When the pieces come in they should enter the assembly process relatively quickly.”
Airbus is confident that, once the first shipment of major components arrives, the $600 million final assembly line will be ready. Mobile’s Airbus site is 53 acres of buildings, aprons and roadways contained within a 116 acre site. Work remaining as of late January:
— Jesco Inc. is leading construction of a $13 million paint shop hangar that will be operated by Ireland’s MAAS Aviation Services. The shop will be finished in July and ultimately will employ 34 people.
— Italy’s Comau Aerospace is supplying the main assembly and test stations, including all jigs and tooling for every station at the Mobile plant. Its work will continue to the first quarter of 2016. It also plans to open an integration center near the plant that will offer full project support.
— Work is underway on the center where customers will take delivery of their aircraft. It’s scheduled to be finished by May, but won’t be equipped or occupied until the end of the year.
Hiring is also keeping pace. As of February 1 about 150 people had been hired.
“We’re on time and on track to complete construction as planned in order to begin receiving components this summer, and to deliver our first aircraft in 2016,” Tucker said. “Our customers expect on-time delivery of their aircraft, and we intend to meet their expectations.”
The first customer is New York-based JetBlue, which is scheduled to take delivery in April 2016 of the first Mobile-built passenger jet, an A321 with a list price of $113.7 million.
The delivery phase itself will be spread out over four or five days and includes ground checks, an acceptance flight, completion of technical acceptance and finishing paperwork, including documents attesting compliance and title transfer, before the jet heads for its home base.
Component makers
France: From Nantes the center wing box, radomes and inlets, from Saint Nazaire the front and central fuselage and from the St. Eloi plant in Toulouse the engine pylons.
Germany: From Stade the vertical tail and composite flaps, and from Buxtehude the communications and cabin management systems. Bremen will build the high-lift systems for the wings.
United Kingdom: The wings will be built in Broughton, North Wales, and the landing gear in Filton, England, by supplier Messier Dowty, part of Safran.
United States: Engines will come from Connecticut (IAE V2533-A5), Ohio or France (CFM56-5B).
A320 family assembly lines
Toulouse, France: A320
Hamburg, Germany: A318, A319, A320, A321
Tianjin, China: A319, A320
Mobile, USA: A319, A320, A321
Gulf_Coast_Aerospace_Corridor.com is a website created in 2008 to highlight aerospace activities along the Interstate 10 corridor between New Orleans and Northwest Florida. It includes reference material, job postings, a daily aerospace newsfeed and weekly column. In 2011, the website teamed with several journalists to create the Gulf Coast Reporters’ League, which writes and publishes an annual book about aerospace in the region. The first book was published in June 2011. In September 2013, the League launched an eight-page quarterly aerospace newsletter, which became a bimonthly in August 2014 after the League published the fourth edition of the annual.
Story and photo: http://pensacolatoday.com
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