Airbus, the European plane maker, plans to build its first assembly line in the United States in Mobile, Ala., in an aggressive foray into the world’s largest market for single-aisle airplanes, The NY Times reported.


The plan calls for an investment of several hundred million dollars in a plant on Boeing’s home turf that could eventually assemble dozens of Airbus’s popular 150-seat A320 jets each year. Details are expected to be announced as early as Monday, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan was still confidential.


Globally, Airbus and Boeing split the market for single-aisle planes fairly evenly. But in the United States, Airbus holds a 20 percent share.


North America is the biggest market for single-aisle planes. Airbus has forecast that nearly 70 percent of new jet sales worldwide over the next 20 years — 19,200 aircraft worth $1.4 trillion by 2030 — will be of this type. Forty percent of those planes are expected to replace aging, less fuel-efficient aircraft.


“If this is confirmed, it is nothing short of a tectonic shift in the dynamics of the North American aerospace market, with strong ramifications for both commercial and defense,” said Michel Merluzeau, a managing partner at G2 Solutions, an aerospace consultancy in Kirkland, Wash.


“That Airbus is considering doing this suggests that they view investment in Alabama as a necessary tool to maintain their competitiveness in North America,” he said.


But the move to open an American factory could reportedly raise eyebrows in European capitals and among labor unions — particularly in France, where the new Socialist government of President François Hollande has said it will seek to punish companies that move jobs overseas with tax penalties and with the withdrawal of certain state subsidies. Airbus opened its first non-European assembly line in China four years ago.