Spirit AeroSystems

On June 17, 2005, Onex Corporation paid $1.5 billion to buy Boeing's Wichita, Kansas, and Tulsa and McAlester, Oklahoma operations. The new company, briefly called Mid-Western Aircraft Systems Holdings, rebranded as Spirit AeroSystems. Jeff Turner, who had run Boeing's Wichita division, became its first CEO. But the roots run deeper. The Wichita site traces back to 1927, when Lloyd Stearman moved his aircraft company there. Boeing bought Stearman in 1929, and the plant went on to build the B-29 Superfortress, B-47 Stratojet, and B-52 Stratofortress. Across the Atlantic, Scottish Aviation Ltd was founded in 1935 in Prestwick, Scotland, producing aircraft through WWII and later becoming part of BAE Systems Aerostructures.

Spirit went public on the NYSE in 2006, trading under SPR. That same year it acquired BAE Systems' aerostructures unit, adding the Scottish and English facilities. In 2007, Spirit won the contract to build the center fuselage for the Airbus A350 XWB. It opened a composite plant in Kinston, North Carolina, in 2010 and delivered the 500th Boeing 787 forward fuselage in 2012. The 2019 grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX hit hard, as 737 fuselages were Spirit's biggest revenue source.

By 2024, Spirit reported $6.32 billion in revenue but also $2.14 billion in net losses and negative equity of $2.62 billion. In July 2024, Boeing agreed to buy back Spirit for $4.7 billion. The deal cleared regulatory hurdles and closed in late 2025, making Spirit a wholly owned Boeing subsidiary. As part of the transaction, assets serving Airbus programs were transferred directly to Airbus under a separate agreement announced in April 2025. Spirit now operates as part of Boeing, with 20,370 employees across facilities in Wichita; Tulsa; Kinston; Belfast; Prestwick; and sites in France, Malaysia, and Morocco. [edit]