Editors are joined by AeroDynamic Advisory Managing Director Richard Aboulafia to discuss the progress of airliner production by Airbus in Alabama and Boeing in South Carolina.

A Tale Of Two FALS—Airbus In Mobile And Boeing In Charleston

Aviation Week's Check 6 Podcast

Welcome to Aviation Week's Check 6 Podcast. I'm Christine Boynton, Senior Editor for Air Transport in the Americas, and today we're talking about Airbus and Boeing, specifically their production lines here in the U.S. For Airbus, opening a final assembly line in Mobile, Alabama 10 years ago was a strategic and political move. Now it's an integral part of the Airframers' narrowbody growth plans. At Boeing, the production campus in Charleston, South Carolina is working to double its 787 final assembly space, for which it held a formal groundbreaking ceremony late last year.

As we know, the last few years have been full of constraints affecting aircraft delivery schedules, but at the end of 2025, both Airframers seemed hopeful that some limitations could ease in 2026. So what can they deliver in the near term, and is investment in further capacity justified? Joining me to break all of this down are Jens Flottau, Executive Editor for Commercial Aviation, Senior Editor Sean Broderick, and Special Guest Richard Abulafia, a Managing Director at Aerodynamic Advisory.

Jens, I'm going to kick it off with you first, because you just visited Airbus in Mobile. And to back up just a bit, their initial plans for that site were actually quite different than what they are today. Is that right? Yeah, totally. I mean, the initial plans go to go back to the mid-2000s when Airbus was competing for the U.S. Air Force tanker program together with Northrop Grumman. And the idea was to put production into Mobile, but there was nothing on the horizon at the time for commercial aircraft.

A Tale Of Two FALS—Airbus In Mobile And Boeing In Charleston

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

A Tale Of Two FALS—Airbus In Mobile And Boeing In Charleston

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.