The Middle Seat Terminal

Air Force One to Remain American Made

By Matt Phillips
The parent of European aircraft maker Airbus says it won’t bid to make the president’s next plane, meaning that Air Force One will all but certainly remain American-made.
The deadline for the U.S. Air Force’s requests for information from bidders is today. “This leaves Boeing as the only provider for an Air Force One platform. Boeing is exploring the 747-8 and 787 as candidates, according to a company official,” Aviation Week writes.
On of the company’s goals is investing in the United States to create high-technology jobs, EADS spokesman Guy Hicks told Reuters. However, “after careful review, we’ve determined that participation in the AF-1 program will not help us meet these business objectives,” Hicks told the wire service.
While EADS cited business objectives in declining to submit an Air Force One bid, others wondered whether the specter of political pushback deterred EADS from vying for the contract. Aviation Week writes:
Some industry officials suggest EADS may have opted not to compete to avoid another high-profile fight with Boeing on Capitol Hill. Buy American advocates hammered the Air Force last year after it awarded the KC-135 replacement deal to a team of Northrop Grumman and EADS North America, which proposed an Airbus A330 variant. That deal was scrapped after Boeing protested and congressional auditors determined that the Air Force broke procurement guidelines. A new competition is expected.
As aviation consulting firm, Leeham Company, wrote on its blog that an Airbus bid for Air Force One would likely be an even harder sell on Capitol Hill than the tanker, since “there was no way EADS would assemble the A380 in the US, in contrast with the prospect of building the KC-30 air force tanker in Mobile (AL), meaning the airplane would have been assembled in France.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/01/28/air-force-one-to-remain-american-made/