Nick Oxford/Reuters/File
The fuselage of a plane destined for Boeing's 737 Max production facility waits for shipment on a railroad siding at Boeing's top supplier Spirit Aerosystems Holdings in Wichita, Kansas, on December 17, 2019.
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Boeing said it is in talks to buy Spirit AeroSystems, a major supplier that was part of Boeing until its 2005 sale and was also involved in the Alaska Airlines mid-air door plug explosion.
The negotiations were first reported by The Wall Street Journal and The Seattle Times early Friday. Spirit shares soared 15% in Friday trading following the news. However, the stock price has fallen 10% since the Alaska Airlines disaster in early January. Through Thursday's close, it had fallen 70% since the fatal Boeing 737 Max crash in March 2019. As a result, the aircraft was grounded for 20 months.
Boeing sold Spirit in 2005 and received $900 million in cash as proceeds. Spirit AeroSystems, based in Wichita, Kansas, makes key parts for several Boeing models, including the 737 Max fuselage. The parts will then be shipped by rail to Boeing's factory in Washington state.
“The recombination of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems' manufacturing operations will further strengthen aviation safety, improve quality, and serve the interests of our customers, employees, and shareholders,” Boeing said in a statement late Friday. I believe that.'' “While there is no guarantee that we will be able to reach an agreement, we are committed to finding ways to continue to improve the safety and quality of the planes that millions of people depend on every day. ”
Spirit has had a series of quality control problems in recent years. The problem became so severe that Boeing agreed to give Spirit more money to improve its quality and reliability problems, which negatively affected Boeing's own production output. This payment generated him an additional income of $60 million last year, and in 2024 and 2025 he generated an additional income of $395 million.
These payments demonstrate Boeing's motivation for the deal with Spirit. Unless the spirit issue is resolved, it will be impossible for the company to become profitable. And it's going to cost Boeing money to fix these problems, whether it's its biggest customers or the owners of those businesses.
About $3.9 billion of Spirit AeroSystems' revenue last year came from Boeing, accounting for about 64% of its total revenue.Boeing's rival Airbus is owned by Spirit Second largest customer. Even if Boeing reacquired Spirit, it's unlikely it would be able to keep that part of its business.
Spirit's market capitalization as of Friday's close was $3.7 billion, slightly less than what Boeing paid for Spirit last year as a major supplier, after its stock price rose on reports of a possible acquisition. However, after posting a total net loss of $31.5 billion over five years, Boeing ended 2023 with just $12.7 billion on its balance sheet, down from $14.6 billion the year before.
The National Transportation Safety Board's initial report on the January accident in which a door plug exploded aboard an Alaska Airlines flight showed that the plane crashed into a Boeing Co. in October with four bolts missing that were needed to secure it in place. It turned out that the product had left the factory.
However, the reason Boeing removed the door plug and missing bolt was because the plane arrived at the Boeing factory with a problem with five rivets made by Spirit AeroSystems. Therefore, even if Boeing was ultimately responsible for the problem, Spirit's quality issues may have also played a role.
The NTSB has not yet assessed liability in this incident.
But this bolt is just one of a series of quality issues that have occurred at Spirit AeroSystems in recent years. The plane was delivered to Boeing still in need of work, resulting in so-called “out-of-sequence” work that may have caused some of Boeing's own quality problems.
Deliveries of the 737 Max jet were halted in 2023 after a “non-standard manufacturing process” was used to join parts of the aircraft. And just a month ago, Spirit employees notified Boeing that the two holes might not meet Boeing's exact requirements, so Boeing reworked about 50 undelivered planes. I needed to.
This story has been updated with additional reporting and context.
