Stop 1 · France
Toulouse
Airbus is headquartered at Blagnac and assembles the A320, A330 and A350 here; Concorde first flew from Toulouse on 2 March 1969. Latécoère's airline, later Aéropostale, employed Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Cities where commercial airliners are assembled
Five places where the wings, fuselage sections and engines arrive from a dozen countries and leave as a finished passenger jet — the last stop before the airline's paint job.
The five stops
Stop 2 · Brazil
São José dos Campos
Embraer, founded here in 1969, builds its E-Jet airliners at its headquarters plant. The Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (1950) and the space agency INPE are also in the city.
Stop 3 · United States
Mobile
Airbus's Mobile plant at Brookley opened in 2015 and assembles A320-family and, since 2019, A220 aircraft. The city's Carnival dates from 1703 and its parades from 1830.
Stop 4 · United States
Everett
Boeing's Everett plant opened in 1967 to build the 747 and remains the largest building in the world by volume; it now assembles the 777 and 787.
Stop 5 · China
Tianjin
Airbus's Tianjin final assembly line has built A320-family jets since 2008. Nine foreign concessions operated here from 1860; the 2015 port explosions killed 173.
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