A Look Inside Airbus’s Alabama Assembly Line

This was the most striking part to me: &quot;According to The Seattle Times, the starting rate at the Airbus plant, about $16.50 per hour, is comparable to the starting wages at Boeing’s passenger-plane plant in Renton, Wash. But the Airbus pay scale tops out at $23 an hour, while experienced Boeing workers can earn $45.&quot;<p>We now have so much surplus labor that even this relatively skilled job only pays $16.50 an hour.

These are some massive sub-assemblies being carted all over the world...it&#x27;s surprising to me that there aren&#x27;t more localized efficiencies, or that this global Lego set doesn&#x27;t always have more missing pieces than its worth.<p><pre><code> Rear Fuselage: Hamburg, Germany Vertical Stabilizer: Stade, Germany Forward Fuselage: Saint-Nazaire, France Wings: Broughton, Wales Engines: Middletown, Connecticuit Final Assembly: Mobile, Alabama</code></pre>

&quot;American workers expect things to go wrong and then they fix it&quot;<p>I found this this interesting, also that it was said by a <i>25 year old</i> manager.

&gt; Almost a third of American factory workers now hold four-year college degrees, a trend that reflects the increasingly cerebral nature of the work.<p>Wow.

&quot;It helps that in Alabama, labor is cheap. Airbus set a goal that building planes in the United States would not cost a penny more than building in Europe. It is expensive to ship parts from Hamburg, but because the Mobile workers are not unionized, Airbus can hire fewer of them and pay them lower wages.&quot;<p>I think that&#x27;s the money quote of the article. Large multinational corporations have a long history of moving factory work to cheaper third world countries.<p>Economic disparity has gotten so bad in the US in the past couple of decades that, effectively, places like Alabama now qualify as &quot;third world&quot; in that economic game.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;static01.nyt.com&#x2F;images&#x2F;2017&#x2F;05&#x2F;07&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;07airbus-slide-QGOR&#x2F;07airbus-slide-QGOR-superJumbo.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;static01.nyt.com&#x2F;images&#x2F;2017&#x2F;05&#x2F;07&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;07airbus...</a><p>&quot;Beware of propeller&quot; seems like a strange name for a ship :)

It&#x27;s surprising to me how small the cargo-hold is. I&#x27;ve always imagined it to be a lot bigger, but now that I think about it (having seen it), it makes a lot of sense..

So Mobile is to Airbus as Charleston is to Boeing.

A lot of this article talks about the US government subsidies and back rubbing required to sell to the US market. What about the reverse case? What is required to sell Boeing planes in Europe?<p>Last time I checked there are a lot of protectionism clauses surrounding EU aerospace markets.

Looking at those pictures I wonder how assembly, from unloading cargo to final testing, could be fully automated. I came to think that until we automate automation it will be quite hard. Humans with assist of tools are flexible enough - especially on this scale.

One of my uncles has worked for Bell, Boeing, and Lockheed for the last 30 years. The mechanical complexity of aircraft, and the ability for a blue collar worker to master a niche aerospace trade, never ceases to amaze me.

The vivid color contrasts in these photos make them visually stunning, but do they serve any functional purpose?

Fascinating to see something made not in China, and even the components don&#x27;t come from there. (I realize they also do assembly and produce some components in China too.)

I&#x27;m disappointed American Airlines don&#x27;t buy all Boeing planes, especially given their name. Although Airbus planes do have some American parts on them, they&#x27;re mostly European. Considering they got USD$15 Billion in bailout money from the US Government, and just how good Boeing planes are at a very similar price point, supporting manufacturing in their country of origin seems like the right thing to do.