Airbus has finalised a deal to take over some assets and sites from Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, clearing the way for the struggling US aerospace supplier to be acquired by its former parent Boeing.
The European plane maker will take over the former Shorts wing manufacturing site for the Airbus A220 in Belfast, as well as a facility in Kinston, North Carolina, for fuselage sections of the Airbus A350 model and a site in France also making parts for the wide-body plane. Other factories include a wing-component site in Prestwick, Scotland, according to a statement by Spirit.
Some portions of the deal are tentative, like the remainder of the Belfast site and a business in Malaysia, which Airbus will take over if no other suitable buyer is identified.
The latest accounts for the Belfast operations which continues to file as Short Brothers, say that it employs 3,400 people.
Airbus will receive a payment of $439 million (€387 million) from Spirit to take the assets, according to a release by Airbus. The plane maker will also provide Spirit with $200 million of credit lines to help the struggling manufacturer support the Airbus programmes. Airbus said the financial accord won’t change its earnings outlook for this year.
“With this operation, Airbus aims to ensure stability of supply for its commercial aircraft programmes through a more sustainable way forward, both operationally and financially, for key Airbus work packages,” Airbus said.
The Airbus deal is a key part of a complex three-way transaction that reunites Boeing with Spirit, an operation that the US company spun off in 2005.
While Spirit has since become an important vendor to Airbus, it is still Boeing’s largest single supplier. Boeing’s $4.7 billion (€4.14 million) acquisition, announced in July 2024, required Airbus to take over some operations or rely on its global rival Boeing to supply it with critical aircraft components.
Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage for Boeing’s 737 aircraft from its base in Wichita, Kansas, has struggled financially for years. Both plane makers have provided it with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to prop up its finances and keep parts flowing.
Boeing’s move to reacquire its former subsidiary was triggered by a near-catastrophic accident on January 2024 in which a fuselage built by Spirit lost a large panel during flight.
That mishap led to a rolling crisis at Boeing, leading to a management shake-up, an ongoing quality makeover and federal limits on Boeing’s production that are still in place.
At the time of the deal’s initial announcement in July 2024, Airbus said it would pay $1 for the Spirit assets it was acquiring, and receive $559 million in compensation. Airbus said on Monday that the compensation amount has been adjusted to reflect revised transaction perimeters.
The facilities that Airbus is taking over are crucial to the European planemaker’s aircraft programmes, and have struggled to keep up with Airbus’s timetables to increase output.
Chief executive Guillaume Faury said in February that issues at Spirit were putting pressure on the ramp-ups of both its A350 wide-body and A220 single-aisle aircraft programmes.
Spirit makes the central section panels for the A350 in Kinston, which are incorporated into the widebody’s fuselage in Saint-Nazare. In Belfast, it makes advanced composite wings for the A220. The Prestwick plant builds wing leading and trailing edge elements for the A320, Airbus’s top-selling jet.
Airbus is keen to ramp up output of the fuel-efficient and airy A220 model that it acquired control of from Bombardier for a symbolic one Canadian dollar in 2018. Under Bombardier, the programme was years late and billions over budget, and Airbus has said it wants to cut costs and turnaround the loss-making programme by building 14 units a month by 2026. – Bloomberg
