The mid-air breach of the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines Boeing aircraft has put the spotlight on one of the plane maker’s biggest suppliers: Spirit AeroSystems.
Spirit, which built the door panel that blew out of the Alaska plane on Friday, is one of the largest suppliers of aircraft structures in the world, building 737 Max fuselages and other airframe components for Boeing and for its European rival Airbus. The 27kg, four-foot-long door was finally located in a Portland, Oregon, suburb on Sunday night.
Technical specialists from the National Transportation Safety Board, the independent US government agency responsible for investigating civil transport accidents, will be pouring over every inch of the door for clues.
Shares in Spirit fell 7 per cent on Monday, the first day of trading since the incident. The company also issued its first statement on the accident, stressing that its “primary focus” was the “quality and product integrity of the aircraft structures we deliver” and that it was continuing to work with Boeing on the issue.
“Spirit’s biggest programme is 737, so what is bad for 737 is bad for Spirit — no way around that,” said Sash Tusa, analyst at Agency Partners.
Industry experts said it was too early to draw conclusions as to what led to the accident with the 737 Max 9, noting that it was not yet clear whether the blow out was an assembly error from Boeing, a manufacturing issue by Spirit or a different problem altogether.
Boeing, citing the ongoing investigation, declined to comment on whether the plug-in doors installed by Spirit are then removed by the plane maker at its facility outside Seattle in order to complete the cabin before being reinstalled during final assembly.
Spirit used to be Boeing Wichita, located in the heart of Kansas’s aerospace hub and the state’s largest private employer. It was spun out of Boeing in 2005 as the US group looked to shift fixed costs of its manufacturing facilities and labour to the variable cost of procuring parts from a supplier.
It produces the fuselage for the Max and fuselage and wing components for the wide-body 787 used for long-haul flights. It also builds aerostructures for Airbus jets, including parts for the A350 and A320. It builds the wings for the A220 jet in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Spirit’s relationship with Boeing has been rocky and marked by clashes over pricing as well as labour challenges.
More recently, it has been dominated by production problems that have affected Boeing’s deliveries to airline customers. This has come as the plane maker has sought to increase its output rate and gain back market share it lost to Airbus during the grounding of the Max fleet in 2019 after Max 8 accidents.
Last April, Boeing discovered that Spirit had improperly installed two fittings on the vertical stabiliser on the 737, forcing the jet maker to delay deliveries to customers. Four months later, a new problem arose: incorrectly drilled holes in the rear pressure bulkhead for some fuselages.
The quality problems and soaring inflation have cost Spirit money on its fixed-price contracts, according to analysts. The supplier has not reported a profit since 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, posting a net loss of $546mn in 2022 on sales that exceeded $5bn.
In October, Tom Gentile, Spirit’s chief executive, departed abruptly and was replaced on an interim basis by Pat Shanahan, a 31-year Boeing veteran who was briefly acting secretary of state for defence in the Trump administration. Shanahan has already renegotiated an agreement with Boeing to give Spirit better prices for its work on the 737 and 787 aircraft.
The agreement also requires Spirit to increase staffing in engineering and quality control and to carry buffer stock, “including two weeks’ worth of finished goods for 737 work”. It also says Boeing must agree to any “change in control” at the company — protection for the plane maker in case Spirit becomes a takeover target.
Analysts said Shanahan’s relationship with the aircraft manufacturer had already proven to be critical and could prove crucial now.
“Having Pat take charge, and then getting that new arrangement with Boeing, has drawn the two companies even closer together. I think that should help Spirit in sorting out its Boeing programmes,” said Rob Stallard, analyst at Vertical Research Partners.
“Pat’s first priority — rightly — was to renegotiate the key contracts between Spirit and Boeing. For too long, Boeing’s worship of returns on investment or assets meant short-changing everything, including suppliers and labour,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at Aerodynamic Advisory.
Others said that having Shanahan in place as interim chief executive should also help the two companies manage the current crisis better.
“Not only should [it] help Spirit — it gives new confidence Boeing should have in Spirit,” said Scott Hamilton of aviation consultancy Leeham News.
“Shanahan is a no-nonsense guy who knows production and, importantly, knows Boeing — and Boeing knows him.”
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