Airbus rejects backlash over tanker deal

By Tim Hepher

PARIS (Reuters) - The chief executive of European planemaker Airbus (EAD.PA) said on Friday he was surprised at what he called a protectionist reaction in the United States to the award of a major U.S. air refueling tanker contract to a consortium including the European plane maker.

In a telephone interview with Reuters, Airbus CEO Tom Enders rejected criticism by some lawmakers that Airbus was responsible for destroying more jobs in the United States through domestic subsidies than it could create by assembling tankers there.

"That is a big nonsense. We are sourcing from the U.S. roughly $11 billion a year for EADS as a group, mostly for Airbus, and we are the single largest customer outside the U.S. for the U.S. aerospace and defence industry," he said.

"We are supporting a couple of hundred thousand of jobs in the US," he said, adding it was about 190,000 jobs.

The United States and European Union are suing each other in a trade spat over alleged subsidies, each saying the other side's policies threaten aviation jobs in their own backyard.

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said on Thursday it defied common sense for one branch of the U.S. government to challenge Airbus subsidies while another branch awards Airbus a big contract.

"We have 1,000 Airbuses flying with airlines in the U.S., so Airbus is contributing tremendously to the U.S. economy," Enders said. "This protectionist talk which you get in the U.S. or in Europe is completely out of synch with the realities of our industry and globalization."

The U.S. Air Force was briefing Boeing Co (BA.N) on Friday about why it lost the $35 billion tanker replacement program to the proposal from Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N) and EADS.

HOME BASE ALABAMA

Enders was speaking by telephone from Mobile, Alabama, where Airbus plans to set up a plant to assemble nearly all the 179 tankers ordered from Airbus parent EADS and Northrop Grumman, as well as Airbus A330-200F freighters for the commercial market.

Sections of the planes will still be made in Europe. The KC-45A tanker will use the airframe of the Airbus A330 jetliner.

The tanker contract will add more than 1,000 jobs in Mobile and sustain employment in Europe, Enders said.

Airbus says the deal will add 1,000 U.S. assembly jobs on the tankers and 300 jobs on the freighters, while Northrop cites 2,000 direct new Alabama jobs including militarization work.

Enders called Alabama the "home base" for efforts to broaden the European planemaker's international footprint and hinted the U.S. state could end up accommodating more Airbus work later.

"Today we are in Mobile and celebrating the first new commercial aircraft final assembly line in 40 years, which will do tankers and freighters, and who knows, we will see what the perspective of that is," he said.