Mobile, Alabama Mayor on New Airbus Plant, Return of Carnival Cruise Routes

It’s been a big year for the city of Mobile. Airbus Group (AIR) opened a $600 million aircraft manufacturing plant and Carnival Corporation (CCL) said it will resume cruise routes after leaving the port city four years ago. ‘Airbus hopes to build four airplanes a month,’ said Mayor Sandy Stimpson of Mobile, Ala. ‘It’s difficult to project what it means for the city, but possibly 4,000 jobs over the next few years.’ The aircraft manufacturing giant hopes to build 40-50 planes a year. The plant is Airbus’ first one in the U.S. ‘Mobile is now the world’s newest and fastest growing aviation cluster and that certainly bodes well for our future economy and region,’ said Bill Sisson, CEO of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce. Aside from the burgeoning aviation scene in Mobile, Carnival Corporation announced plans to resume service in Mobile, starting in November 2016. ‘If you ask Carnival why they left the city, it was economics,’ Mayor Stimpson said. ‘There were other ports where they could make more money and so they moved some ships to take advantage of that because of the downturn to the economy.’ Carnival operated routes out of Mobile for seven years, before withdrawing from the region in 2011. ‘We kept courting them and they made the decision to come back,’ Stimpson said. TheStreet’s Scott Gamm reports from New York.