FTC greenlights Boeing’s $4.7B Spirit AeroSystems deal with conditions

My Northwest ^ | Dec 4, 2025 | Staff

[CondoleezzaProtege]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has approved Boeing’s long-planned acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems two decades after it was spun off, according to The Seattle Times.

The decision was issued on Wednesday and allows the $4.7 billion all-stock merger to proceed under conditions designed to preserve competition in both the commercial and defense aviation sectors.

In a July 2024 news release, Boeing emphasized that the transaction is intended to improve manufacturing consistency and support the company’s engineering workforce.

Boeing’s total assumption of Spirit’s debt brings the transaction value to about $8.3 billion.

In its complaint released earlier this month, the FTC warned that the acquisition could give Boeing outsized control over an already concentrated market, one in which Boeing and Airbus deliver roughly 95% of the world’s commercial aircraft.

To mitigate those risks, the FTC is requiring Boeing to divest Spirit units that supply Airbus, including Spirit’s Malaysia operations, and to guarantee continued support for competing defense contractors.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Joshua Dean, who was a quality auditor for Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier of Boeing, passed away recently. Despite his healthy lifestyle, Dean went to a hospital a couple of weeks before his death as he was having trouble breathing. Later, he developed pneumonia and a bacterial infection, and hence could not be saved, according to The Seattle Times.

Dean had complained to the FAA on “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line” at Spirit.

- Deccan Herald 5/19/2024

[T.B. Yoits]

So, because Boeing can't trust quality control at Spirit AeroSystems, they're buying them back.

Spirit AeroSystems is the company that manufactured the door plug in Malaysia and assembled it into the 737 MAX airframe Spirit AeroSystems built in Wichita Kansas (missing the bolts), before delivering the airframe "across the street" to Boeing. Two months later, Alaska Airlines flight 1282 had the door plug blow out on a flight leaving Portland Oregon.