Airbus and Boeing fillet Spirit Aerosystems
The former Boeing division Spirit Aerosystems is to return to Boeing. However, it also builds for Airbus. Now there is a solution.
An Airbus 321 of the Greek airline Aegean Airlines
(Image: Daniel AJ Sokolov)
Airbus and Boeing split up Spirit Aerosystems. This is the company that manufactures aircraft fuselages and other aircraft parts for Boeing and Airbus, and was a division of Boeing until 2005. Both Boeing and Spirit are in crisis.
Last year, it was agreed that Boeing would bring the supplier Spirit Aerosystems back under the group umbrella. Boeing will assume 3.5 billion US dollars in debt and give Boeing shares to the existing Spirit shareholders. The share package was worth around 4.7 billion US dollars in mid-2024.
But it's not that simple. Spirit also supplies Boeing's competitor Airbus. For competitive reasons, Boeing could therefore not swallow Spirit Aerosystems. But now a solution has been found: Airbus is taking over large parts of the facilities where Spirit produces on behalf of Airbus. If no buyer can be found for the rest, Airbus will take over all these Spirit parts working for Airbus. A third-party buyer has probably already been found for a factory in Malaysia.
The Airbus deal
Technically, Airbus does not have to pay anything for this, and the Spirit parts to be taken over will even fetch 439 million US dollars. However, this may not be enough to get the faltering company through. Airbus is therefore providing a non-interest-bearing credit line of 200 million dollars.
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Specifically, Airbus is taking over the Spirit factories where the fuselages for the A350 are manufactured (France and USA), the production of wing parts for the A320 and A350 in Scotland, a factory in Casablanca which manufactures parts for the A321 and A220 (former Bombardier CSeries), the production of A220 engine mounts in the USA and the production of A220 wings in Northern Ireland. Parts of the A220 fuselage are also manufactured there; Spirit should find another buyer for this part of the business if possible. If this does not succeed, Airbus will also step in there.
Spirit is in crisis for several reasons. On the one hand, Boeing had to temporarily halt production following safety defects in the 737 MAX and 787, which forced Spirit to lay off thousands of employees. There were also significant shortcomings in Spirit's own production. On the other hand, Spirit ran into a cost squeeze in its contracts with Airbus.
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