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Unions in Northern Ireland have called on the government to intervene to safeguard more than 2,500 jobs and the region’s biggest aerospace manufacturing base after Airbus confirmed plans to take over some of the facilities of supplier Spirit AeroSystems.

The European plane maker on Monday announced plans to take over Spirit’s components production for some of its key programmes as part of a wider carve-up of the struggling supplier with US rival Boeing.

The transfer to Airbus includes activities in the UK, including at Belfast in Northern Ireland and in Scotland, as well as in France, Morocco, and Kansas and North Carolina in the US. The deal paves the way for Boeing to complete the $4.7bn takeover of Spirit announced last year.

Uncertainty over the future of Spirit’s historic Short Brothers factories in Belfast remains. The operations are integral to the region’s thriving aerospace industry that employs about 3,500 people. One of the facilities makes the carbon-fibre wings for Airbus’s A220 jets.

Unite and the GMB union warned that the agreement raised “serious concerns” over the future of the activities and announced a protest at Westminster on Wednesday.

Susan Fitzgerald, Ireland secretary at Unite, said the UK government needed to step in “in some capacity” and threatened industrial action if jobs were put in danger.

“We are looking in real time at the break-up of one of Northern Ireland’s linchpin companies for the economy,” she told the Financial Times.

Under the agreement, Airbus will take over the A220 wing production, which employs about 1,000 people. In the event that a third-party buyer is not found for the non-Airbus work, the plane maker will also take over production of the A220 mid-fuselage, which employs about 500 people.

Another 2,000 people work on non-Airbus business, including maintenance and repair work. They also manufacture fuselage sections and other components for business jets built by Canada’s Bombardier. If a third-party buyer is not found, Boeing will take over these activities.

Fitzgerald said Airbus had told unions that if it took on the A220 fuselage work, it could only be for 24 months.

  “There’s wording in the term sheet that the fuselage wouldn’t stay there indefinitely. What they have verbally said to us is that you’re probably talking two years,” she said.

Airbus said the existence of “transitional provisions” in the term sheet did not “prejudge any long-term outcome”.

The “optimal solution” it said, was for a “credible third-party industrial buyer” to be found for the non-Airbus activities. This would allow the mid-fuselage work to “continue operating as part of a strong, sustainable aerospace ecosystem”.

The unions want Spirit’s Northern Ireland sites to be transferred to a single aircraft manufacturer — ideally Airbus.

Alan Perry, senior organiser at GMB in Belfast, which represents about 300 workers at the plant, said there was now a 12-week “cooling-off period . . . to try and sort all this out”.

“Obviously Airbus and Boeing can’t be on the same site,” he said.

“Nobody is saying the factory is going to close but how is it going to remain if we have a jigsaw [of ownership]?” Perry added.

Under the deal, Airbus will also take charge of a site in Prestwick, Scotland, which makes wing components for its A320 and A350 aircraft programmes.

The company will be compensated for taking on the lossmaking production work by a $439mn payment from Spirit, less than the original $559mn originally planned owing to changes in the deal. Airbus will also provide non-interest-bearing credit lines worth $200mn to Spirit.

Airbus said its “immediate priority” was to “stabilise operations [and] ensure continuity for our programmes”.

Sash Tusa, analyst at Agency Partners, said the deal could have implications for Airbus’s plans to increase output.

While it was “clearly possible that Airbus will consolidate all the A220 work on a single site in Belfast . . . production moves like that take months and are very disruptive”, he said in a note.