The story
Spirit was originally formed as Mid-Western Aircraft Systems when Boeing sold its Wichita factory along with facilities in Tulsa, Oklahoma and McAlester, Oklahoma to the investment firm Onex Corporation in June 2005 for US$900 million in cash and the assumption of $300 million in debt, a total of $1.2 billion in enterprise value. The company was renamed Spirit AeroSystems a few months later. The sale was part of a larger effort of Boeing to divest itself of assets, in pursuit of increased return on net assets, a metric focused on by CEO Harry Stonecipher, who had come from McDonnell Douglas.
The Wichita plant was originally founded as Stearman Aircraft in 1927 before being acquired by the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation (UATC) in 1929. Following the breakup of UATC in 1934, the plant was retained by Boeing and became the Wichita division of the Boeing Airplane Company in 1941. The Wichita division was responsible for the construction of several models of strategic bomber aircraft including the B-29 Superfortress, B-47 Stratojet, and B-52 Stratofortress. The Wichita factory primarily builds fuselage sections, including 70% of the structure for the Boeing 737.
The Tulsa plant was originally opened as a Douglas Aircraft Company facility to build bombers and other aircraft during World War II. When the war ended, Douglas mothballed the plant until 1953 when it reopened to assemble the B-47 StratoJet and the B-66 Destroyer. North American Aviation moved into about a third of the facility in 1962. The Tulsa plant builds wings and components for Boeing aircraft.
The McAlester factory opened in 1964 as North American Aviation facility, supported the company's Apollo capsule and B-1B Bomber projects, primarily focusing on machining operations in support of the Tulsa factory.
Over time North American and Douglas would both become part of Boeing, which took control of both Oklahoma factories in 1996. Operationally, they were wrapped into the Wichita division. However, Boeing long expressed interest in selling the Oklahoma factories. When they were spun-off to Spirit, again talks were held about selling the Oklahoma plants. However, nothing came of these talks. In 2020, Spirit announced it would close its McAlester plant, moving work to Tulsa and Wichita.
Under Onex ownership, Spirit's mandate was to build a portfolio of business with customers other than Boeing. In January 31, 2006, BAE Systems announced it had agreed to sell its aerostructures business, based at Glasgow Prestwick Airport and Samlesbury Aerodrome, to Spirit. The unit is a major supplier to Airbus (80%), Boeing (15%) and Raytheon (5%). The transaction was completed on April 1, 2006. Spirit paid £80,000,000 (equivalent to £141,473,912 in 2025) for the business. In 2009, Spirit opened a plant in Subang, Malaysia out of a need for expansion and to take pressure off the Prestwick facility. Spirit opened a composites manufacturing facility in Kinston, North Carolina on July 1, 2010, to build sections of the Airbus A350. Those sections are then sent to another Spirit plant in Saint-Nazaire, France, where they are partially assembled before being sent on to Airbus in Toulouse for final assembly. During this time, Spirit also won the contract to build the wings for the Gulfstream G280 and G650.
Onex sold its final shares of Spirit in 2014 and at that time it has made $3.2 billion on its ownership of the company.
On October 31, 2019, Spirit acquired Bombardier Aviation's aerostructures activities and aftermarket services operations in Belfast (a former Short Brothers plant) and Casablanca, with the acquisition completing a year later in October 2020. The deal gives Spirit a bigger place in Airbus' supply chain as the Belfast plant produces the wings for the Airbus A220, while the Casablanca factory produces the mid-fuselage for the A220.
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In February 2020, Spirit acquired Fiber Materials Inc., a company which specializes in making high-temperature materials and composites, primarily for the defense and space industry, operating out of facilities in Biddeford, Maine and Woonsocket, Rhode Island. In July 2021, the company purchased Applied Aerodynamics, an aerostructures maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility in Dallas.
Boeing re-acquisition and Airbus asset transfer
After years of losses and quality control problems at Spirit, Boeing started talks to re-acquire Spirit AeroSystems in January 2024. At the time, both Boeing and Spirit faced intense scrutiny after an uncontrolled decompression on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, that occurred when a door plug (a structure installed to replace an optional emergency exit door) on the Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft, which was not bolted in place due to a manufacturing error, blew out.
After months of talks, Boeing agreed in late June 2024 to buy back Spirit AeroSystems in an all-stock transaction, worth $4.7 billion in equity value and $8.3 billion in enterprise value when including the assumption of Spirit's debt. The conclusion of this deal was announced in Dec 2025.
Boeing took over operations in Wichita, Dallas, Tulsa, Prestwick and non-Airbus parts of the Belfast site. Spirit previously stated its intention to divest Fiber Materials (Biddeford and Woonsocket sites).
In January 2025, Tex-Tech Industries announced it had completed the acquisition of Fiber Materials Inc. and its facilities in Biddeford and Woonsocket from Spirit.
On April 28, 2025, Spirit announced a definitive agreement with Airbus to transfer ownership of certain assets and sites involved in Airbus aerostructure production directly to Airbus. This transfer is expected to close concurrently with the Boeing acquisition, with both transactions now anticipated to finalize in the third quarter of 2025, pending regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.
As part of this agreement, Airbus will take ownership of Spirit's sites in Kinston, North Carolina (A350 fuselage sections), St. Nazaire, France (A350 fuselage sections), and Casablanca, Morocco (A321 and A220 components). Airbus will also acquire the production assets for A320 and A350 wing components in Prestwick, Scotland, A220 pylon production in Wichita, Kansas, and A220 wing production in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The agreement stipulated that Airbus would also acquire the A220 mid-fuselage production in Belfast if a suitable alternative buyer for this specific operation was not identified before the transaction closed. The small non-Airbus operation at Prestwick, consisting of around 50 employees, would transfer to Boeing, and the facility at Subang, Malaysia was planned to be divested to a yet-to-be-identified third-party.
Concurrent with the asset transfer agreement, Spirit and Airbus entered into a memorandum of agreement where Airbus agreed to provide Spirit with non-interest-bearing lines of credit totaling $200 million to support ongoing Airbus programs during the transition period.
In July 2025, Spirit announced that the search for a third-party buyer for the A220 mid-fuselage production and the non-Airbus operations at Belfast had been unsuccessful. As a result, on completion of the Boeing–Spirit acquisition, the A220 mid-fuselage production at Belfast would transfer to Airbus (together with the previously announced Airbus acquisition of A220 wing production there), and the remainder of the Belfast operation (consisting mainly of fuselage production for Bombardier Aviation's range of business jet aircraft) would transfer to Boeing.
From Wikipedia’s article on Spirit AeroSystems, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7