United Technologies Corp. casts a large shadow over the business aviation sector of the U.S. economy, but little by little UTC’s connection to Connecticut is fading from view.
Nowhere was that clearer than at the recent National Business Aviation Association convention in Las Vegas.
Pratt & Whitney Canada’s two-story booth towered above others. Nearby, UTC’s Aerospace Division had a large display, but it bears a North Carolina home address. Pratt & Whitney’s Tool Support Service was the only part of the legendary family of aviation companies on the exhibit floor still sporting a Connecticut address.
While the optics have changed, the Pratt & Whitney shadow is a source of comfort — and business — for a host of small Connecticut-based manufacturers.
Sitting in a folding chair adjacent to Pratt & Whitney Tool Support’s booth, Tommy Kelly was all smiles. He’s the sales manager of Kell-Strom Tool, a small family-owned shop in Wethersfield that has been a Pratt & Whitney supplier for decades. These days, Kell-Strom’s turbine engine service tools are sold to Pratt & Whitney Canada, but Kelly isn’t concerned. Shipping goods a couple of hundred miles further north isn’t much of an issue, and the checks still cash.
Kelly said his company deepened its connection following UTC’s geographic spread. The firm has struck a deal to supply tools to UTC’s Aerospace Division in North Carolina. Years ago, when what is now UTC Aerospace had been under the Hamilton Standard flag, Kell-Strom supplied its tools in a deal that ended badly in a dispute. Now, in the continuing whirl of corporate dominos, the aerospace unit moved out of the UTC family only to return this year. Kell-Strom was quick to seize on the second chance.
A football field away on one of two vast display floors, Morse Watchmans is busy trying to leverage a Pratt & Whitney connection into opening the aviation field to its line of security products.
For more than a century, Morse Watchmans has made a business of keeping track of keys. Over the years, the state-of-the-art shifted from the classic oversized key ring on the watchman’s belt to elaborate electronic systems with biometric security.
The small Oxford firm expanded its range of business from keys to tools, and anything else that needs to be secured. It added an elaborate audit trail system, pleasing government regulators.
Morse’s business is strong in the corrections field, and its systems are in every casino on the Las Vegas Strip, account executive Tom Troia said.
Back before the turn of the century, Morse Watchmans displayed its wares at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. It started with one sale, which produced a referral, which produced another sale, which produced another referral. Troia hopes history will repeat itself in the aviation field.
Morse Watchmans provides Pratt & Whitney with a tool-locking and tracking system at a number of the aviation giant’s facilities. The products seem a natural fit for the aviation field, Troia said. Traffic at the Morse booth was brisk, but in the aviation field, results take time.
With nearly 32,000 attendees — NBAA members, vendors, support staff, and a host of media — the annual NBAA convention is the place to be for vendors like Kell-Strom and Morse Watchmans.
More than a dozen other Connecticut firms were spread out across the two exhibit floors. There were parts companies like Veeder Root, a Simsbury supplier of refueling technologies, and TLD America of Windsor, maker of high-efficiency industrial-strength portable generators. Kaman Aerospace Group in Bloomfield had a significant presence.
Without headlining names like Sikorsky and UTC itself, the Connecticut aviation brand left something to be desired.
