Mitch Heaton joins Hartzell Propeller to lead company’s AAM programmes for electric aircraft

Hartzell Pro­peller has appoint­ed Mitch Heaton as direc­tor of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment and New Tech­nol­o­gy to fur­ther the company’s pro­grammes involv­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty (AAM). 

His focus will be on devel­op­ing pro­pellers for eVTOL, eSTOL, elec­tric, hybrid and hydro­gen pow­ered air­craft, using sophis­ti­cat­ed engi­neer­ing ana­lyt­ics, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion skills and world-class man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies. 

Hartzell is work­ing close­ly with sev­er­al OEMs to fine-tune their pro­peller appli­ca­tions and has ded­i­cat­ed tens of thou­sands of engi­neer­ing and devel­op­ment hours to elec­tric, hybrid and hydro­gen pow­ered air­craft since 2019, by con­tin­u­ing to make advance­ments in tool­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es, and light­weight­ing mate­ri­als. 

“Mitch Heaton has expe­ri­ence lead­ing strat­e­gy and busi­ness devel­op­ment across mul­ti­ple indus­tries, with avi­a­tion and aero­space often as a focus,” said Hartzell Pro­peller Pres­i­dent JJ Frigge. 

“His efforts have includ­ed design of con­nec­tion sys­tems for air­craft, grow­ing unmanned aer­i­al ecosys­tems, and col­lab­o­rat­ing with lead­ers of glob­al aero­space and defense com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions.” 

Heaton is a mem­ber of the Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion Man­u­fac­tur­ers Association’s Elec­tric Propul­sion Inno­va­tion Com­mit­tee, and sev­er­al sub­com­mit­tees. He also serves as a mem­ber of the Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies Com­mit­tee of the Nation­al Busi­ness Avi­a­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NBAA).

He has also been vice pres­i­dent of Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment for the Day­ton, Ohio Devel­op­ment Coali­tion and exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Growth Strate­gies for Woodard Devel­op­ment. 

He was named to Day­ton Busi­ness Journal’s 40 Under 40 list in 2017, has served on the Board of Direc­tors for the Ohio Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Asso­ci­a­tion and is a mem­ber and past pres­i­dent of the Engineer’s Club of Day­ton.

Ear­li­er this month, Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty wel­comed indus­try pro­fes­sion­als to its sec­ond Air Mobil­i­ty Sym­po­sium which aimed to answer the ques­tion: ‘What does Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mean for the State of Ohio? Ses­sions explored the birth­place of avi­a­tion as a hub for research, test­ing, and man­u­fac­tur­ing, in addi­tion to proac­tive­ly shap­ing pol­i­cy and infra­struc­ture plan­ning to inte­grate air mobil­i­ty into Ohio com­mu­ni­ties safe­ly and equi­tably. 

Last month, the US Sen­ate passed the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Coor­di­na­tion and Lead­er­ship Act, which estab­lish­es an inter-agency work­ing group to more effec­tive­ly engage the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in fur­ther­ing the AAM sec­tor.

NBAA Pres­i­dent and CEO Ed Bolen applaud­ed the pas­sage of the bill, which will facil­i­tate the cre­ation of poli­cies, pro­ce­dures and pro­grams to sup­port the inte­gra­tion of this emerg­ing avi­a­tion sec­tor into the US trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture.