Propped Up In East Haddam
When most people think of airports, they think of big planes, long lines, roaring jets and little else.
But there is an immense amount of air traffic that most people outside of aviation never ponder.
Much of it is cargo traffic, for instance; packages carried by plane from smaller regional airports to larger ones, mostly in the holds of smaller prop-driven aircraft.
Then there are the taxi and ferry services, such as Cape Air, which flies people every few minutes to and from the Bay State’s sickle-shaped coastline.
There is even the growing number of aircrafts owned partially or wholly by corporations that, rather than rely on traditional commercial aircraft, find it easier to have a nearby small plane in which to ferry their executives around.
That’s all good for business at East Haddam’s New England Propellers.
The company overhauls and rebuilds the propellers that power these smaller planes — mostly 19-seat or smaller aircraft — from its facility in the East Haddam Industrial Park on Matthews Drive.
It’s been continuously operating since 1951, and owned by current President Arthur D’Onofrio since 1977.
Originally headquartered at Bradley airport and later, Brainard Airport, the 20-person company has been in the East Haddam Industrial Park since the 1980s.
Maintenance Required
Propellers are complicated devices. Although similar in shape to bladed window fans, there is little else in common.
Propeller blades can change their pitch to adjust how an airplane climbs or cruises, and can even reverse direction to act like a brake, D’Onofrio said.
They also have strict rules governing when it’s time for them to be overhauled or replaced, he said. Most taxis that are ferrying passengers for a fee are required to perform maintenance on their props after a certain number of hours.
If they don’t, the owners of the planes risk losing their licenses.
Ground and service crews — usually bound in airport hangars — verify those service records. Typically, it’s those crews which send propellers to East Haddam.
D’Onofrio estimates New England Propellers services about 600 propellers a year, with each one taking about two weeks. The company has a second, similar-sized facility in Pennsylvania that does the same.
The East Haddam facility gets a lot of its work from the New England area, while the Pennsylvania facility handles much of the overhaul work coming from the Midwest.
Although the aerospace industry is almost by definition international, D’Onofrio said increasingly, much more of his business is coming from overseas than in decades past.
“We have propellers in here that have come from Venezuela or even farther,” he said, a trend that has to do with the fact that his shop is only one of a handful in North America that performs overhaul service on propellers.
But there is another reason, too, he said: The dollar.
“The fact that the currency has fallen so much definitely helps,” he said.
Ken St. Onge is a freelance writer who also blogs about manufacturing at NutmegMachine.com.
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