Boeing agreed to buy back Spirit AeroSystems for $4.7 billion in stock and Airbus moved to take on the supplier’s loss-making Europe-focused activities in return for hundreds of millions of dollars of compensation following months of talks.
The near-two-decade independence of the world’s largest standalone aerostructures company ended in a carve-up between its largest customers after the latest Boeing 737 MAX crisis, sparked by a mid-air door plug blowout in January, brought to a head doubts over the resilience of fuselage manufacturing.
