LONDON, England – This week’s Farnborough International Airshow will be the 10th and last major summer aviation expo for Alabama under Governor Kay Ivey.
The state’s delegation on the industry recruitment mission co-led by Commerce Secretary Ellen McNair and Ivey Chief of Staff Liz Filmore is larger this year, reflecting Alabama’s continued growth in aerospace and aviation since Ivey became governor.
Ivey was sworn into office in April of 2017. Two months later, she led the state team to the Paris Air Show, the biennial sister event to Farnborough.
“She planted the flag pretty early as it relates to shaping the future of aerospace and defense development in the state,” said Greg Canfield, who was Alabama’s secretary of commerce from 2011 to 2023. “It makes a big difference whenever you have a governor who takes on and actively engages in that. She brought not only her expertise from her time in a number of state-level offices, but she’d also been the chair of the Aerospace States Association when she was lieutenant governor.
“She had a unique perspective and a strong leadership role that she established. She was able to build on some of the success that we’ve already had, but she was also able to kind of blaze some new trails by meeting with leaders and C-suite executives and CEOs of companies during the air shows that she attended, and her message was very strong.”
Federal data shows that in 2016, there were about 82,000 to 85,000 jobs in Alabama’s aviation, aerospace and defense industry, including manufacturing, engineering, defense contractors and space and aviation services and maintenance.
Today, there are about 118,000 to 125,000 such jobs, an increase of 40% to 45%.
“This growth is not by chance,” McNair said. “It is the result of strategic decisions and plans to target these industries not just with incentives, but with the infrastructure, education systems and skilled workforce that make Alabama an easy choice for prospective companies. And many of those decisions and plans start in the Governor’s Office.”
In 2021, Ivey signed legislation to expand the state’s two largest economic development incentives, the Alabama Jobs Credit and its sister, the Investment Credit. In 2023, she championed the “Game Plan” package of bills that included again strengthening the Alabama Jobs Act and creating the Site Evaluation and Economic Development Strategy Act (SEEDS) to accelerate the development of industry-ready sites around the state.
Support and initiatives from Montgomery help local communities in their recruitment efforts.
“Over the past decade, Alabama’s leaders worked with local leadership to implement tools that have strengthened our position in aviation and aerospace,” said Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle.
“The Legislature’s approval of new reimbursement tax credits for job creation, along with recruitment tools not available elsewhere in the United States, has helped fuel sustained growth in the aerospace sector. These resources have supported Huntsville’s expanding aviation and defense ecosystem, enabling continued progress across programs ranging from advanced missile systems to autonomous aerial platforms.”
The increases in aviation, aerospace and defense since 2016 have been driven by several companies and federal programs, including:
Airbus’ expansions in Mobile since it first opened in 2015;
Growth at Redstone Arsenal and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center programs;
Blue Origin, which opened in 2020 and now has about 1,600 employees;
Boeing, which has been in Alabama more than 60 years;
Aerojet Rocketdyne/L3Harris, which came to Alabama in 2019;
Dynetics (Leidos), also new to Alabama in 2019.
And Ivey was directly involved in much of that growth, Canfield said.
“I think that the biggest thing she did was create an environment where aerospace and defense companies knew that Alabama was amenable to having them locate in our state, and that Alabama was going to support them not only in the traditional sense of incentives and things like that, but also in terms of leadership support at all levels of state governments,” said Canfield, who is now managing director of economic development for the law firm Burr and Forman.
The state’s delegation at this year’s airshow, which opened today, includes not only Commerce’s team and Filmore, but Alabama Department of Workforce Secretary Greg Reed, leaders from several colleges and state and federal lawmakers, including U.S. Sens. Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville.
On the Paris trip nine years ago, Ivey said Alabama has everything an aerospace company needs to succeed – skilled workforce, top-rated training programs and a pro-business environment.
“But we didn’t stop there, we didn’t wait to see what might land in Alabama,” Ivey said recently. “We made ourselves better trained, more competitive and more responsive to industry needs to recruit new companies and show those already here why their expansions should be in Alabama.
“When I look back at my tenure as governor, what we’ve done in aviation and aerospace will be one of the shiniest stars.”
