It was formally created as an independent authority by the Alabama Legislature in 1982, charged with the management of both Brookley and the Mobile Regional Airport.

Attempting to capitalize off the site's unique mix of road, rail, water, and air transportation, the authority began a campaign during the late 1980s to recruit the aviation and aerospace industries to Brookley.

[4] On January 22, 2019, Mobile Downtown Airport announced the beginning of Frontier Airlines nonstop flights to Denver (DEN) and Chicago O’Hare (ORD) starting on May 1, 2019.

On Monday, January 6, 2020, Frontier Airlines announced a suspension of all scheduled flights to and from the Mobile Downtown Airport citing insufficient demand.

[9] The complex is home to many aerospace industries and features direct connections with Mobile Bay via its own docks, CSX railway, and with Interstate 10.

[11][12] On February 29, 2008, the United States Air Force announced that a partnership between Northrop Grumman and EADS North America had won first round of a contract to produce the new KC-45 aerial refueling tanker to replace the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.

The contract would have been worth up to $40 billion with 179 planes to be delivered over the succeeding ten to fifteen years, with production of these aircraft at Brookley.

Although Northrop Grumman declined to bid (stating that it considered the RFP to be too heavily weighted in favor of Boeing and its planned Boeing 767 entry), on April 20, 2010, EADS announced it was re-entering the competition on a stand-alone basis, and intended to enter a bid with the KC-45 with final assembly at Brookley.

[20] Airbus Mobile officially opened on September 14, 2015, covering one million square feet on 53 acres of flat grassland.

As a result of this partnership, Airbus plans to open an assembly line for CSeries aircraft in Mobile, particularly to serve the US market.

[22] The CSeries was renamed the Airbus A220 on 10 July 2018;[23] deliveries from Mobile are expected to start in 2020, at an initial rate of four aircraft per month.