The port strike could strand Boeing and Airbus parts
The massive port strike on the East and Gulf Coasts isn’t just affecting food and furniture shipments. The aviation news site Leeham News and Analysis noted that key U.S. facilities for Boeing (BA) and Airbus (AIR) get their parts from ports that are currently shut down.
Boeing produces its 787 Dreamliner planes in South Carolina, and Airbus builds A320s, A321s, and A220s in Alabama. Respectively, they’re supplied by ports in Charleston and Mobile. A work stoppage by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) may make it more difficult for some of those parts to get through.
The situation complicates operations for both companies in different ways. For Airbus, the supply-chain crunch that led it to cut its annual guidance for plane production just got a little crunchier, though the company says it expects to be able to get its parts through the port and onto its assembly lines.
“Airbus is aware of the situation and does not anticipate an impact on operations in Mobile at this time,” the company said in a statement to Quartz. The manufacturer says that it will use “alternative transport processes for general cargo, if required.”
Boeing, which is dealing with its own strike by International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers–represented (IAM) workers in Washington state, was relying on its South Carolina facility to keep a trickle of cash coming in.
Because Boeing’s 787 factory is in a so-called right-to-work state where union organizing is more difficult, many of its employees there are not unionized and can keep making planes during the IAM strike. But that wouldn’t be the case if they don’t have the supplies they need to do so. Boeing did not immediately respondto a request for comment.
