Boeing Acquires Spirit AeroSystems, While Boeing's 'Starliner' Unit Gets a New VP

Spirit Aerosystems builds aircraft components, including fuselages and flight deck sections for Boeing, according to Wikipedia. But now Boeing is set to acquire Spirit AeroSystems.

The aviation blog called Aviation Source News says the price tag was $4.7 billion, and opines that Boeing's move signals "a renewed focus on quality and supply chain stability" as Boeing "addresses lingering concerns surrounding its 737 program." Spirit's recent struggles with quality control and production delays have had a fallout effect for Boeing... By integrating Spirit's operations, Boeing can implement more stringent oversight and ensure consistent manufacturing processes. This move is a direct response to past quality lapses that have plagued the company and damaged its reputation. Beyond quality control, the acquisition also offers Boeing greater control over its supply chain. By bringing a key supplier in-house, Boeing can streamline production, improve coordination, and reduce the risk of future disruptions...

Spirit AeroSystems also supplies parts to Airbus, Boeing's main competitor. To address this, a separate agreement is being negotiated for Airbus to acquire Spirit's Airbus-related business. This strategic move ensures that Airbus maintains control over its own supply chain and prevents Boeing from gaining undue influence over its competitor's production.
Meanwhile, the vice president leading Boeing's Starliner spacecraft unit "has left his role in the program and been replaced by the company's International Space Station program manager, John Mulholland," Reuters reports, citing a Boeing spokesperson. In its first test mission last summer flying astronauts, Starliner was forced by NASA to leave its crew aboard the ISS and return empty in September over problems with its propulsion system. A panel of senior NASA officials in August had voted to have a Crew Dragon capsule from Elon Musk's SpaceX bring them back instead, deeming Starliner too risky for the astronauts.

Paul Hill, a veteran NASA flight director and member of the agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said during a quarterly panel meeting on Thursday that NASA and Boeing continue to investigate Starliner's propulsion system. A Boeing spokesperson said on Thursday that the company and NASA have not yet determined what Starliner's next mission will look like, such as whether it will need to repeat its crewed flight test before receiving NASA certification for routine flights.

But the good news is..

[rossdee]

that the last couple of planes that went down, weren't built by Boeing.

Happy Flying!

[organgtool]

According to someone who claimed to be a whistleblower, one of the reasons that the NTSB was easily able to determine that the door plug was not bolted to that 737 in the Alaska Airlines incident is due to the trail of evidence left behind by the systems Boeing and Spirit used to process work orders. This acquisition will likely make those systems unnecessary, which will reduce the trail of evidence available for future incidents. Don't forget, Boeing spun off some of its workforce to create Spirit Aerosystems, which provided a nice scapegoat when things went wrong. Boeing wouldn't undo all of that hard work and kill their scapegoat unless they were gaining something huge in the process. I don't expect this to improve the quality of their planes, but I do expect their rugs to have a lot more bulges.

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[ArchieBunker]

The good news is Boeing is building the new Air Force One and the orange one is complaining that its taking too long. So this may have a positive outcome.

Still deranged anon coward, I see

[tiqui]

This story was about Boeing, not Donald Trump...but I guess the guy lives rent-free in the craniums of some, where brains ought to be. [sigh]

As for your political attack, it's a dishonest attempted joke: Biden spent something like 40% of his entire 4-year presidency on vacation, and that's not including any time he spent shaking hands with, and talking to, invisible people. I somehow doubt this caused you any mental anguish, and you probably did not try joking about it. Trump, like him or not, has been in o

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[ArchieBunker]

A bit defensive about orange jesus.

That didn't last

[DrMrLordX]

Boeing spun off Spirit Aerosystems 20 years ago. Seems kinda pointless now.

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[Richard_at_work]

Boeing has been playing the game of "oops, outsourcing to external suppliers didnt work out the way we wanted it to" since the 787 debacle kicked off in 2007 - they ended up having to buy most of the suppliers for that program because they couldn't control quality, but even since doing that they have still had fundamental quality issues with many aspects of the 787 supply line.

Boeing saw the model that Airbus was using, and wanted to move to it - they failed.

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[Cyberax]

Yeah, the key difference is that Airbus is not outsourcing to get the lowest costs. They are doing it for purely political reasons.

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[garyisabusyguy]

Cost and quality have inverse relationship, and since most US trained MBAs work to decrease costs in order to increase revenue for quarterly numbers, quality should be expected to decrease

It does not really matter with consumer goods, since Americans are easily induced to purchase new goods every few years, but with things like airplanes...

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[pjt33]

Cost and quality have inverse relationship

I'm pretty sure that's not what you intended to say.

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[Ed Tice]

I think you mean to say they have a direct relationship not an inverse relationship. That's not entirely true either, though. Quality (and more importantly, safety) certainly cost money. But not all money leads to increased safety. That's why, despite what the armchair CEOs here say, it's not easy to be a manufacturer of safety-critical goods. Even though safety is a factor, your customers are still price sensitive, so the business ends up looking for way to save cost without compromising safety. Unfo

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[93 Escort Wagon]

Yeah, a better headline would be "Boeing re-absorbs Spirit Aerosystems".

It is interesting that, somewhere in that 20 year period of independence, Spirit managed to pick up some of Airbus' work.

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[dunkelfalke]

Only by acquisition - Spirit bought companies that did some manufacturing for Airbus.

There never was a point to it.

[tiqui]

When a corporation grows to become dominant in its industry (as Boeing did in the USA) and then management announces that business units are being spun-off, it should ALWAYS be a flashing red light to share holders that the management proposing it is incompetent. In nearly every such instance, the unit being spun off has been profitable in the first place, which is why it existed at all, and yet the current management is having troubles and wants to drop it. Before any board ever approves such a maneuver, t

For anyone who doesn't know...

[Tough Love]

For anyone who doesn't know, Spirit is just Boeing's Wichita division that it spun off in 2005. Arm's length? What's that?

Re:For anyone who doesn't know...

[g01d4]

For anyone who doesn't know, Spirit is just Boeing's Wichita division that it spun off in 2005. Arm's length? What's that?

Boeing's original cunning plan [blackadderquotes.com] was to spin off and/or outsource all the low margin, labor (union) intensive tasks to the hoi polloi while maintaining an elite rump of Boeing monikered program managers and system engineers since that was where the greatest profit margins were to be found. Another fine legacy of the McDonnell Douglas merger. What could go wrong?