Collins Aerospace is an American aviation and defence technology company, which is one of the world's largest suppliers of the aerospace and defence products. It was formed in 2018 from the merger between Rockwell Collins and UTC Aerospace Systems. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, it is a subsidiary of RTX Corporation.
Toulouse (/tuːˈluːz/, too-LOOZ, French: [tuluz] ; Occitan: Tolosa [tuˈluzɔ] ) is a city in Southern France, the prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, 150 kilometres (93 miles) from the Mediterranean Sea, 230 km (143 mi) from the Atlantic Ocean and 680 km (420 mi) from Paris. It is the fourth-largest city in France after Paris, Marseille, and Lyon, with 511,684 inhabitants within its municipal boundaries (2022); its metropolitan area has a population of 1,513,396 inhabitants (2022). Toulouse is the central city of one of the 22 metropolitan councils of France. Between the 2014 and 2020 censuses, its metropolitan area was the third fastest growing among metropolitan areas larger than 500,000 inhabitants in France.
Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the SPOT satellite system, ATR and the Aerospace Valley. It hosts the CNES's Toulouse Space Centre (CST) which is the largest national space centre in Europe, but also, on the military side, the newly created NATO space centre of excellence and the French Space Command and Space Academy. Safran, Thales Alenia Space, Airbus Defence and Space, Collins Aerospace and Liebherr-Aerospace also have a significant presence in Toulouse.
Rockwell Collins, Inc. was a multinational corporation headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, providing avionics and information technology systems and services to government agencies and aircraft manufacturers. It was formed when the Collins Radio Company, facing financial difficulties, was purchased by Rockwell International in 1973. In 2001, the avionics division of Rockwell International was spun off to form the current Rockwell Collins, Inc., retaining its name.
It was acquired by United Technologies Corporation on November 27, 2018, and since then operates as part of Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies).
UTC Aerospace Systems (UTAS) was one of the world’s largest suppliers of aerospace and defense products, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. The company was formed in August 2012 when parent United Technologies Corporation merged their existing subsidiary Hamilton Sundstrand with the newly-acquired Goodrich Corporation. In 2018, UTC acquired Rockwell Collins which was merged to form Collins Aerospace.
Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. is an American manufacturer of aerostructures for commercial airplanes, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, and wholly owned by Boeing. The company produces fuselage sections for Boeing's 737 and 787 aircraft, as well as the flight deck sections for a majority of Boeing airliners. Spirit also supplies Airbus with fuselage sections and front wing spars for the A350 and wings for the A220. Spirit's primary competitors in the aerostructures market include Collins Aerospace, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Leonardo, and Triumph Group.
Spirit AeroSystems was established in 2005 when Boeing spun-off its Wichita division to an investment firm. Boeing entered into an agreement to re-acquire Spirit in July 2024 for $4.7 billion. Concurrently with Boeing’s completed acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems, Spirit has transferred specific assets involved in Airbus production directly to Airbus under a definitive agreement announced in April 2025. As of December 2025, both transactions received the necessary regulatory approvals and closing conditions have been satisfied.