The General Aviation Manufacturers Association’s 2013 new-airplane shipment statistics show that new airplanes last year required a tad shy of 2,000 propellers. That might be a mere shadow of the 20,762 props for 17,580 aircraft required in the peak production year, 1978, but it’s an improvement on the 1,300 propellers shipped on new airplanes in 1987, the year Jim Brown and his family bought Hartzell (Booth 1817) from TRW.

The turboprop is enjoying something of a resurgence in general aviation, as well as at the regional airlines, as operators gain a keener appreciation of its economies and value; and of course there is the market for the active GA fleet, piston and turboprop, which still wears out or dings propellers that need to be overhauled or replaced. Half of Hartzell’s business today comes from aircraft OEMs, modifiers and homebuilts; the other half comes from aftermarket parts and service. Seventy percent of revenue is derived from the U.S.

Jim’s son Joe Brown, group president of Hartzell and 2014 vice chairman of GAMA, said his company commands 80 percent of the market for the horsepower band it serves (80 hp to 2,200 shp, with anywhere from two to six composite or aluminum blades and steel or aluminum hubs), shipping 3,700 props annually, half of them for export, and about 60 percent of the total market for aircraft propellers, which spans the Dowty and Hamilton Standard props on the biggest commuters and military transports, all the way down to light sport aircraft.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Middlebury College, Joe Brown joined Hartzell in 1990 and has been involved primarily in manufacturing, quality, inventory control, information technology, purchasing and accounting. As he conducts a tour of company headquarters in Piqua, Ohio, he reveals his passion for lean manufacturing and waste reduction, self-directed work teams, cellular manufacturing, and the technologies of enterprise resource planning and CadCam design tools.

Even with all the automation now installed, there are still 300 employees in Piqua, half of them in manufacturing; 40 in engineering; 30 in sales, marketing and support; 30 in parts and service; 15 in quality control and 35 in other functions, including five tech reps who provide 24/7 support, and five tech writers. Ninety percent of parts orders are shipped the same day from Piqua. The company has a factory service center in Piqua and 20 authorized service centers in 11 countries.

Composite Blades

Hartzell produced the first certified composite propeller blade in 1978, but Joe Brown recalls that it was regional airlines that drove the shift toward composite props, beginning in the late 1980s. Composite props are considered more durable operationally because they are more damage tolerant. “A metal blade is a tuning fork that can be affected by nicks, more so than a composite blade, and overall the cost of operating a composite-blade prop is lower,” he noted, adding that equivalent composite blades are 35 percent lighter than metal ones. “The fifth blade on the five-blade prop that comes with the new TBM900 was free in terms of weight versus the metal four-blade prop it replaces.”

Brown sees composite as a better choice for every conventional propeller application, but for outright performance (such as the Red Bull racing spectacle, which Hartzell supports) “go with metal. Metal is less costly, and for blades you can’t make them thinner than in metal.”

Hartzell has 19 certified applications for its composite props, among them the TBMs and the Avanti, and it says there are blades with more than 50,000 hours logged still flying on commuters. Certification testing has included 75 bird impacts and 20 lightning strikes in the lab.

NBAA Convention News 2014

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