CEO: Airbus might take 2 Spirit plants, pending Boeing’s action

AMSTERDAM – The head of Airbus told Reuters it is “not unlikely” that the European airplane maker will take control of two U.S. and U.K. plants run by Spirit Aerosystems if Boeing goes ahead with plans to buy one of the industry’s key suppliers.

But Chief Executive Guillaume Faury said it was up to Boeing to fine-tune its intentions – having changed the status quo with a surprise plan to buy back its former unit – and Airbus would have a

“word to say” about where the two factories ended up.

The fate of the plants and their combined 4,000 workers – in Kinston, North Carolina, and Belfast, Northern Ireland – has been swept up in the latest crisis at Boeing, which aims to buy its supplier to ease the fallout from a 737 Max panel blowout.

“There are not many companies in the world that could be good owners for these activities,” Faury said in an interview, when asked whether Airbus expected to have to acquire them.

“We make our wings so we could be a very legitimate owner of the activities in Belfast. And we do sections, so we could also be a very legitimate owner of the Kinston plant,” he said. “So that’s part of the possibilities, and not an unlikely possibility. It’s a not unlikely outcome, but it’s not the only one.”

Reuters reported last week that Boeing, Spirit and Airbus were working directly or indirectly toward a potential “framework” that could lead to Spirit’s break-up, but valuations were a hurdle.

The 500,000-square-foot, robote quipped Kinston composites plant makes panels for an upper fuselage section and a carbon-fiber spar, or beam, for each wing of the A350.

In Belfast, Spirit builds composite wings for the A220 in a plant previously owned by the plane’s original designer, Canada’s Bombardier. It relies on modern but costly technology that reduces the use of energy-guzzling pressurized ovens.

But the two state-of-the-art Air bus focused plants both lose money, raising the question of how much if anything Airbus might be forced to pay to untangle Spirit for the sake of its archrival, industry sources say.