Here are some facts about the company.
Revenue
Spirit, which was part of Boeing prior to being spun off from the aviation giant in 2005, garnered around 70% of its US$6.05 billion in 2023 revenue from the US planemaker.
Airbus accounted for 23% of revenue, with the rest coming from defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, as well as the US government.
Backlog
The company, which lost more than US$600 million in 2023, is divided into three business lines: commercial, defense and space, and aftermarket. More than 80% of its revenue last year came from the commercial division.
Spirit’s backlog at the end of last year stood at nearly US$50 billion, with about 55% from the Boeing 737 and around 11% from the Airbus A320.
Operations
Boeing in 2005 opted to reorganise operations in Wichita, Kansas and in Tulsa and McAlester, Oklahoma into a separate entity, Spirit. At the time, Boeing officials described the move as an efficiency drive that would lead to lower procurement costs.
In 2006, Spirit acquired BAE Aerostructures, providing an entree into business with Airbus that was supplemented in 2020 when Spirit purchased select assets from Bombardier in Northern Ireland, Morocco and Dallas, Texas.
“We are currently the sole-source supplier for nearly all the products we sell to Boeing and Airbus,” Spirit said in its latest annual report.
Dreamliner and Airbus
Besides fuselages for the Boeing 737 MAX, Spirit builds major parts for other Boeing planes, including the 787 Dreamliner and the 777.
Spirit is also a major supplier for the Airbus A320 family, the A220, the A330 and the A350.
Global facilities
At the end of 2023, the company had six facilities in the United States, two in Britain, and one each in Malaysia, France and Morocco.
Pat Shanahan, who worked for more than 30 years at Boeing and briefly served as Acting Secretary of Defense in 2019, joined the board of directors in 2021 and was named interim CEO in 2023 as the company faced production and quality control problems.
The company’s stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange. It employed 20,655 people at the end of 2023, with 14,780 in the United States, the majority in Wichita.