Short Brothers

Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes.^[1] It was particularly notable for its flying boat designs manufactured into the 1950s.

In 1943, Shorts was nationalised and later denationalised, and in 1948 moved from its main base at Rochester, Kent to Belfast. In the 1960s, Shorts mainly produced turboprop airliners, major components for aerospace primary manufacturers, and missiles for the British Armed Forces.

Shorts was primarily government-owned until being bought by Bombardier in 1989 and, in 2007, was the largest manufacturing concern in Northern Ireland.^[2] In November 2020, Bombardier sold its Belfast operations to Spirit AeroSystems.^[3]

The company's products include aircraft components, engine nacelles and aircraft flight control systems for Bombardier Aerospace, Boeing, Rolls-Royce Deutschland, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney.^[4]