Story ID: 341
Legacy Support Drives Ontic Growth
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: Ontic's aerospace legacy component support programs continue to grow.
Word Count: 407
Ontic’s legacy parts manufacturing and MRO business is benefitting from its unique position in the aerospace industry, and the nearly 50-year-old company is about to achieve annual revenues of $250 million.

A member of the BBA Aviation family, Ontic has “an ambitious growth profile,” said Robert Sadler, director of business development, “and we’re steadily achieving that in line with BBA expectations.” Last year, Chatsworth, California-based Ontic’s revenues topped $235 million.

Ontic’s specialty is helping aerospace manufacturers keep legacy products flying by taking on manufacturing and maintenance support for components that are no longer efficient for the OEM to continue making. Ontic licenses or acquires components and assemblies from the OEM then continues manufacturing and supporting these products under its Extended Life Solution. More than 3,000 customers worldwide use Ontic’s services, and the company’s engineers and technicians support over 4,500 assemblies for commercial aviation, rotorcraft, business aircraft, and military aircraft.

“We’re not a competitor to our partners,” said Sadler. “We’re a service. We don’t compete with them in designing and developing new products.” When sustaining and keeping products becomes a non-core function or doesn’t fit the OEM’s future plans, but the OEM has an obligation to support the product, he added, “we step into the OEM’s shoes and keep the products supported for the life of the need.”

Ontic four signed licensing agreements with different OEMs in 2018, which the company said it will support from its Chatsworth headquarters. Ontic employs about 600 people and also operates manufacturing and MRO facilities in Creedmoor, North Carolina; Plainview, New York; Cheltenham, UK; and Singapore.

At Heli-Expo, Ontic (Booth B2024) is highlighting licenses to manufacture Honeywell flight deck displays for various helicopters such as the Airbus EC135, Sikorsky S-76 and S-92, and some Bell models. On the military side, Ontic makes displays and fuel controls for the CH-53. The Honeywell display license covers 162 LRUs for avionics such as TCAS, MFD/radar displays, horizontal situation indicators, and vertical speed indicators. Ontic also has a license for the flight control computer on the Leonardo AW101.

“Our sales team will be engaging with customers for avionics displays and fuel control and fuel pump capabilities, as well as fuel computers,” he said. “We offer a wide range of manufacturing techniques. This is driven by our OEM partners recognizing how successful we’ve been for them.”