Boeing has finally given in to the pressure. Overwhelmed by delivery delays and recurring production quality problems from one of its main suppliers, the American aircraft manufacturer had to react. It decided on Monday 1is July, to buy the equipment supplier Spirit AeroSystems. “We believe this agreement is in the best interests of travelers, our customers, Spirit and Boeing employees, our shareholders and our country more generally.”said Dave Calhoun, who will remain Boeing’s CEO until the end of the year.
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It must be said that this first-tier supplier was singled out and designated as one of the main people responsible for Boeing’s setbacks. It was Spirit that manufactured, for example, the cap door of a Boeing 737 MAX that tore off at high altitude, in early January, during an Alaska Airlines flight. Previously, in 2020 and 2021, the supplier had already forced Boeing to interrupt deliveries of its long-haul 787 Dreamliner for nineteen months after the aircraft manufacturer discovered problems with fuselage section joints.
A brake that, at the time, weighed down Boeing’s accounts by 6.5 billion dollars (around 6.04 billion euros). For Spirit, it is a return to the fold. Before being sold, twenty years ago, in 2004, following a transaction that was more stock market than industrial, the aeronautics and defense equipment manufacturer belonged, in fact, to Boeing. Since then, the aircraft manufacturer had hardly strayed far from Spirit, since it remained its best customer, monopolizing 60% of its production in 2022.
To secure
Boeing’s desire to buy Spirit has forced Airbus to react accordingly. ” To protect [ses] interests »the world number one in aeronautics, announced in turn, on 1is July, the acquisition of part of Spirit’s activities. The group concluded the acquisition of fuselage section production for its long-haul wide-body A350 and its medium-haul A220. The fuselage sections for the A350 are produced in Kinston (North Carolina, United States) and Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique), while parts for the A220 are manufactured in Belfast (Northern Ireland), but also in Casablanca (Morocco) and Wichita (Kansas, United States).
With this acquisition, Airbus wants to secure, by internalizing them, the production for its two aircraft. The objective is to “protect our production capacities and our intellectual property”the European aircraft manufacturer says. In short, the group does not want part of its production to depend on Boeing, its main, and almost only, competitor.
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