[LONDON] Airbus reached a final agreement 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 planemaker will take over a facility in Kinston, North Carolina, for fuselage sections of the Airbus A350 model, as well as a site in France also making parts for the widebody plane. Other factories include a wing manufacturing site for the A220 in Belfast, Ireland, and 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.
Airbus will receive a payment of US$439 million from Spirit to take the assets, according to a release by Airbus. The planemaker will also provide Spirit with US$200 million of credit lines to help the struggling manufacturer support the Airbus programmes. Airbus said the financial accord will not change its earnings outlook for this year.
“With this operation, Airbus aims to ensure the 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.
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While Spirit has since become an important vendor to Airbus, it’s still Boeing’s largest single supplier. Boeing’s US$4.7 billion 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, has struggled financially for years. Both planemakers have provided it with hundreds of millions of US 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 shakeup, 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 US$1 for the Spirit assets it was acquiring, and receive US$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 officer Guillaume Faury said in February that issues at Spirit were putting pressure on the ramp-ups of both its A350 widebody 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 compositae 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 turn around the loss-making programme by building 14 units a month by 2026. BLOOMBERG
