By RIO YAMAT
AP Airlines and Travel Writer
Boeing said Monday that it has completed a $4.7 billion purchase of key supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which builds fuselages for the giant aerospace company's 737 Max jetliners, including an Alaska Airlines aircraft that suffered a door-panel blowout last year.
The deal, in the works for over a year, brings Boeing's largest provider of spare parts in-house. CEO Kelly Ortberg called it a “pivotal moment” for the company's future.
“As we welcome our new teammates and bring our two companies together, our focus is on maintaining stability so we can continue delivering high quality airplanes, differentiated services, and advanced defense capabilities for our customers and the industry," Ortberg said in a statement.
Boeing previously owned Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit but spun it off in 2005. Reabsorbing the company, which is not related to Spirit Airlines, reverses a longtime Boeing strategy of outsourcing major work on its passenger planes, an approach that faced mounting criticism in recent years as manufacturing problems at Spirit disrupted production and delivery of popular Boeing jetliners, including 737s and 787s.
When Boeing announced in July 2024 that it planned to reacquire Spirit, it positioned the move as a step toward improving quality and safety. Concerns about safety came to a head almost six months earlier, after the door panel flew off the Alaska Airlines plane as it traveled 16,000 feet (4,876 meters) over Oregon.
The mishap left a gaping hole in the side of the jetliner, but no one was seriously injured. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board later said that four bolts that help secure door panels were missing from the Alaska jet after repair work at a Boeing factory.
The finding renewed questions about Boeing’s safety culture and came as the company confronted an ongoing criminal case over two earlier fatal crashes involving its Max jetliners.
Those crashes, which happened off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, killed 346 people and led to a worldwide grounding of the 737 Max for nearly two years. The Justice Department accused Boeing of deceiving regulators about a flight-control system that was later implicated in the crashes.
The criminal case was resolved just last month, when a federal judge in Texas approved the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the charge as part of a deal with Boeing. In exchange, Boeing agreed to pay or invest an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation for the crash victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures.
The total value of the Spirit acquisition is around $8.3 billion, Boeing has said. Shares of Boeing rose roughly 2% in midday trading Monday.
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Boeing on Monday announced it has completed its acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems, according to a media release from the aerospace company.
"This is a pivotal moment in Boeing's history and future success as we begin to integrate Spirit AeroSystems' commercial and aftermarket operations and establish Spirit Defense," said Kelly Ortberg, president and chief executive officer of The Boeing Company. "As we welcome our new teammates and bring our two companies together, our focus is on maintaining stability so we can continue delivering high quality airplanes, differentiated services, and advanced defense capabilities for our customers and the industry."
Boeing's acquisition includes all of Spirit's Boeing-related commercial operations, including fuselages for the 737 program and major structures for the 767, 777 and 787 Dreamliner. It also includes commercially procured fuselages for the P-8 and KC-46.
The transaction also brings Boeing's largest supplier of spare parts in house, expands Boeing's global maintenance, repair and overhaul services footprint and adds to Boeing's rotable, lease, and exchange portfolio with Spirit's aftermarket businesses.
Spirit Defense will continue to support its customers as an independent supplier to the defense industry to ensure uninterrupted support for its customers. It will act as a non-integrated subsidiary of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, aligning for financial reporting and select enterprise functional and site support, but maintaining independent governance and operations.
In addition, portions of Spirit AeroSystems' operations in Belfast, Northern Ireland, have been acquired by Boeing, and the Belfast site will operate as an independent subsidiary branded as Short Brothers, a Boeing Company.
Spirit AeroSystems' commercial and aftermarket operations in Wichita, Kansas; Dallas, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as Spirit's Aerospace Innovation Center in Prestwick, Scotland, will begin to integrate into Boeing. Approximately 15,000 teammates across the five sites are becoming a part of Boeing.
"Kansas' aviation expertise reaches far beyond our borders," said Kansas Governor Laura Kelly. "We help manufacture the aircraft the world relies on. Boeing's acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems underscores the global significance of the work happening in our state and positions Kansas to continue shaping the future of aerospace innovation for decades to come."
"Wichita would not be the Air Capital of the World without the extraordinary engineers, designers and manufacturers who have invested in our aerospace industry and made Kansas their home," said U.S. Senator Jerry Moran. "Boeing's acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems will help build bridges between Seattle and Wichita and bring new opportunities to the Air Capital of the World. I welcome Boeing back to Wichita and look forward to working with them to build a lasting relationship with the community and its workforce, as well as current and future suppliers, to continue building on the growth we have seen in recent years."
"Today's announcement is a great recognition of the world-class talent we have in Wichita," said U.S. Senator Roger Marshall. "Our workers and the unions that represent them have kept America as the gold standard in aerospace, and they deserve to be at the center of any future investment. I'm grateful that this agreement further solidifies Wichita's prestige in the industry."