Boeing has completed its acquisition of 737 Max fuselage supplier Spirit AeroSystems, while Airbus-focussed facilities have been simultaneously divested to the European airframer.
Welcoming the milestone in an 8 December letter to employees, Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg said bringing the businesses together “strengthens our efforts to improve safety and quality throughout our factories, operations and supply chain.”
Almost all of Spirit’s Boeing-related commercial and aftermarket operations, including key sites in Wichita, Kansas and Tulsa in Oklahoma, will be integrated, seeing around 15,000 employees transferred across.
Meanwhile the company has also set up Spirit Defense to “operate as an independent supplier to ensure continuity for critical defence and space contracts” – a condition set by the US Federal Trade Commission for its approval of the merger.
Boeing and loss-making Spirit first agreed to the acquisition in July 2024, amid ongoing quality and financial problems at its key supplier – a business that was formerly part of the US airframer until it was spun off in 2005.
Although Airbus is taking over much of Spirit’s operation in Belfast, Northern Ireland where it builds wings and mid-fuselage sections for the A220 programme, the rump of that business will stay with Boeing, being run as “an independent subsidiary” that is “aligned” to the Boeing Global Services unit.
“While there is a lot of work ahead of us, this is a milestone moment for all of us as we come together as one company,” he says.
In a similar letter to staff, Stephanie Pope, chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, the unit now responsible for the majority of what was Spirit, says to “minimise disruption and maintain continuity”, the newly acquired sites “will continue to operate largely as they do today” before they are gradually integrated.
She highlights the “significant progress” made over the past year “from improving first-time quality to reducing travelled work” – assembly work that needs subsequent rectification. “We did this as two separate companies; imagine what we can do together,” Pope adds.
In addition to the Belfast operation, Airbus us also taking on sites making fuselage sections for the A350 in Kinston, North Carolina and Saint-Nazaire, France, plus facilities in Casablanca, Morocco and Prestwick, Scotland.
The production of A220 pylons will also be transferred from Wichita to Saint-Eloi near Toulouse, France.
Airbus will also receive compensation of $439 million for taking on the units.
“This milestone marks a special moment for all of us at Airbus. We are proud to welcome over 4,000 new colleagues, with whom we will embark on a new chapter in our industrial operations by taking on activities of critical importance to our commercial aircraft programmes,” says Florent Massou, executive vice-president operations for the Commercial Aircraft business of Airbus.
