MOBILE, Ala. – Officials start work today on an EADS engineering center for the Airbus North America plant in Mobile, Ala.
The Airbus Engineering Center at the Brookley Field Industrial Complex will employ about 150 aerospace engineers, initially doing design work on commercial Airbus planes.
The center could grow to include an airplane assembly plant if Northrop Grumman Corp. and EADS North America Inc. can win a competition to build aerial refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force.
Gov. Bob Riley is among scheduled speakers for the groundbreaking.
Executives expected to attend include Thomas Enders, co-chief executive officer of EADS, who is traveling to Mobile from his office in Germany. Allan McArtor, chairman of Airbus North America, and Ralph Crosby, chief executive officer of EADS North America, also are expected to participate.
Airbus and EADS North America are both subsidiaries of the Paris-based European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., the world’s second-largest aerospace company behind the Boeing Co.
The engineering center “is a tremendous facility that any community in the world would be lucky to have,” Neal Wade, director of the Alabama Development Office, told the Mobile Register.
He said the “great thing is we see it as a major step toward a much larger aerospace presence in Mobile, particularly with Northrop and EADS. That’s what we’re all working for.”
The Northrop-EADS team’s prospects for the tanker contract continue to improve. The companies learned last week that an influential study of the Air Force’s options for modernizing its tanker fleet recommended that Northrop and EADS be allowed to compete for the work against Boeing.
Airbus officials said they’ve been flooded with resumes from aerospace engineers interested in coming to work in Mobile. The company began accepting applications in late 2005 and has said it is committed to hiring 50 engineers in each of the next three years.
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