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boeing said on Monday it had completed a $4.7 billion purchase of a key supplier Soul AeroSystems, which makes fuselages for the giant aerospace company’s 737s maximum jetliners, including one alaska airlines The plane whose door panel burst last year.
The deal, which has been in the works for more than a year, brings Boeing’s largest spare parts provider in-house. CEO Kelly Ortberg called it a “pivotal moment” for the company’s future.
“As we welcome our new partners and bring our two companies together, our focus is on maintaining stability so we can continue to provide high-quality airplanes, specialized services and advanced defense capabilities for our customers and the industry,” Ortberg said in a statement.
Boeing previously owned Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit, but spun it off in 2005. Re-absorbing a company that does not belong to it Spirit AirlinesThe move reverses Boeing’s long-standing strategy of outsourcing major work on its passenger planes, an approach that has faced increasing criticism in recent years as manufacturing problems at Spirit disrupted production and delivery of popular Boeing jetliners, including the 737 and 787.
When Boeing announced in July 2024 that it planned to reclaim Spirit, it described the move as a step toward improving quality and safety. Concerns over safety surfaced about six months ago, when an Alaska Airlines plane blew off a door panel while traveling at 16,000 feet (4,876 m) over Oregon.
The crash left a large hole in the side of the jetliner, but no one was seriously injured. National Transportation Safety Board investigators later said that four bolts that help secure door panels were missing from the Alaska jet after repair work at a Boeing factory.
The discovery raised fresh questions about Boeing’s safety culture and came as the company faces an ongoing criminal case over two previous fatal crashes involving its MAX jetliners.
Those crashes, which occurred off the coast of Indonesia and Ethiopia less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, killed 346 people and grounded the 737 Max worldwide for nearly two years. The Justice Department accused Boeing of deceiving regulators about a flight-control system that was later involved in crashes.
The criminal case was resolved last month, when a federal judge in Texas approved the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the charges as part of a settlement with Boeing. In exchange, Boeing agreed to pay or invest an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation for the families of crash victims, and internal safety and quality measures.
Boeing has said the total value of the Spirit acquisition is approximately $8.3 billion. Boeing shares were up about 2% in Monday afternoon trading.