The decision is final.

Airbus has approved plans to construct an aircraft assembly plant in Mobile and will announce the landmark project at a news conference Monday along the city’s downtown waterfront.

The details are astounding: A sprawling, $600 million factory at the Brookley Aeroplex that will assemble A319, A320 and A321 aircraft and employ 1,000 full-time workers at full capacity, according to an internal briefing document obtained by the Press-Register.

More than half of that capital investment is slated for construction, which will commence in 2013 and create an estimated 2,500 jobs over a two-year construction phase. The balance of the money is budgeted for tools, machinery, infrastructure and training.

Aircraft assembly is scheduled to begin in 2015, with first deliveries from the Mobile plant in 2016. Airbus anticipates the plant will produce 40 to 50 aircraft per year by 2017.

Reached for comment Saturday, a spokesman for Airbus Americas said he could not confirm any of the project's details.

"Airbus has nothing to announce at this time," said Clay McConnell, vice president of communications for the company's U.S. subsidiary.

The massive project will establish Mobile as one of a handful of cities around the world that produce large aircraft and give Airbus, a subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., a long-sought foothold on American soil.

It also marks a bold offensive by Airbus against Chicago-based Boeing Co., its arch rival in the commercial marketplace and a U.S. industrial icon.

The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that the move by Airbus onto Boeing’s home turf “could transform the domestic aerospace industry in the same way that Toyota Motor Corp. transformed the auto industry.”

The Japanese automaker led a wave of foreign “transplants” who started building cars in the U.S. in the 1980s, tilting the industry’s axis away from unionized plants in Detroit and toward the right-to-work South.

Alabama turned out its first automobile in 1997 at a Mercedes-Benz plant near Tuscaloosa. The state has since added production plants from Honda and Hyundai, putting it on pace to become the nation’s No. 3 automotive manufacturer within the next few years.

Boeing, which builds its planes in Everett, Wash., and more recently in Charleston, S.C., has fought hard to block Airbus from breaking its monopoly on domestic aircraft production.

Boeing, the nation’s top exporter, waged a bare-knuckle battle with EADS over a lucrative contract to build refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force. The politically charged, five-year-long fight ended in 2011 when the Pentagon picked Boeing for the deal, killing plans by EADS to establish a $600 million assembly plant at Brookley.

EADS wanted the 1,400-worker project to produce KC-45 tankers and Airbus A330 freighter jets, and Mobile invested heavily in a campaign to win the prize. The loss became the latest painful footnote in a city that has known more than its share of heartbreak.

Mobile, founded by the French in 1702, has been whipped by hurricanes, yellow fever and the Union army over the course of three centuries. The city was devastated in 1969 when the Pentagon closed Brookley, a former Air Force base that drove the local economy.

Airbus on Monday will tout the community as the world’s next great center of aerospace excellence, according to talking points distributed to local officials ahead of Monday’s news conference.

Airbus described the investment as “great for America” because it will expand the U.S. industrial base, create high-paying, high-tech manufacturing jobs and support thousands more jobs across a broad network of suppliers.

The project will be unveiled by Fabrice Bregier, a French executive who was named president of Airbus on May 31. Alabama officials scheduled to participate in the announcement include Gov. Robert Bentley, U.S. Sens. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner and Mobile Mayor Sam Jones, according to a copy of the event itinerary obtained by the Press-Register.

The offices of Bentley and Shelby confirmed that the elected officials were traveling to Mobile to attend a news conference on Monday, and the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce distributed invitations to an "exciting economic development announcement" to be held at 10 a.m. at the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center.

The ceremony will be capped with the formal signing of an agreement between Airbus and Alabama. After putting pen to paper, Bregier, 50, and Bentley, 69, will be asked to shake hands in front of a model of the A320neo to “applause from audience and festive music.”

Additional events are planned later Monday and Tuesday in Mobile, highlighted by the arrival of an A320 jet at Brookley.

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Updated at 2:30 p.m. to include comment from Airbus