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A Ford pickup truck rolled up to the headquarters of Spirit AeroSystems on South Oliver Street in Wichita, Kansas Friday morning, towing on a flatbed a sign for what will become the repurposed administration building under its new (and original) owner, The Boeing Company. The Spirit sign was removed, according to two eyewitnesses, replaced with a Boeing one and then promptly covered, signaling the impending end of the 20-year old aerostructures supplier as an independent company.
The lengthy regulatory process that unfolded over the past 18 months to divest Spirit’s industrial operations to Boeing and Airbus is now in its “final days,” a spokesman for Spirit AeroSystems told The Air Current Friday, and formal closing is expected before the end of December. Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. (SPR) will delist from the New York Stock Exchange before the market opens on Monday, Dec. 8, pending the deal’s closure, according to a notice on the exchange’s website.
Related: Inside the strained union of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems
Now, the imminent completion of the complex transaction marks a major realignment for the commercial aerospace industry, still struggling to fix a supply chain whose issues were seeded during the first two decades of the new century.
TAC in May 2023 detailed the tumultuous relationship between Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems and laid out the growing case presented by current and former leaders of both companies for Spirit’s reintegration. Boeing’s then-CEO David Calhoun initially demurred, but that was eight months before the accident aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in January 2024 when a 737 Max 9 violently lost an improperly secured plug exit at 14,800 feet.
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