The company is also involved in composites maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) research and development (R&D) and the collaborative research hub Northern Ireland Advanced Composites and Engineering Centre (NIACE), as well as local education and internship initiatives. Across six facilities, Spirit Belfast employs around 3,500 people and manufactures composite and aluminum structures including wings, fuselages, nacelles, horizontal stabilizers and other aerostructures for commercial, aftermarket and, increasingly, defense and space customers, including Airbus, Bombardier and Rolls-Royce (London, U.K.). Spirit claims its Belfast operations make it the largest manufacturer in Northern Ireland. Most recently, Airbus has announced its intention to scale up production of the aircraft from an average of six per month in 2022 to 14 per month by the end of the decade, and has teased the eventual launch of a larger A220 variant that industry analysts have called the A220-500. The first C-Series aircraft entered into commercial service in 2016, and Airbus acquired a majority stake in Bombardier’s C-Series in 2018, after which it reintroduced the aircraft as the A220 family. The Airbus (Toulouse, France) A220 single-aisle aircraft family, today consisting of an A220-100 variant seating 100-130 passengers and a -300 variant seating 130-160 and produced under the Airbus Canada Limited Partnership, was originally developed and launched by Bombardier (Montreal, Canada) as the CS100 and CS300, respectively, in 2008. Photo credit, all images: Spirit AeroSystems
The 600,000-square-foot facility fabricates and assembles the entire integrated wing for the A220-100 and -300.
In 2020, Tier 1 aerostructures manufacturer Spirit AeroSystems acquired the Airbus A220 composite wing manufacturing facility from Bombardier in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Purpose-built wing manufacturing facility.
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