PODCAST: Doug Washburn of Hartzell Propeller on the Engineering Challenges Shaping AAM’s Next Generation

Our lat­est pod­cast episode is live! In this episode, host Jason Pritchard speaks with Doug Wash­burn, Vice Pres­i­dent of Engi­neer­ing and Flight Safe­ty at Hartzell Pro­peller.

Doug high­lights how Hartzell’s cen­tu­ry of avi­a­tion heritage—specifically its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion exper­tise and high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion capacity—supports the emerg­ing Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) and eVTOL sec­tors. The con­ver­sa­tion focus­es on com­plex engi­neer­ing chal­lenges, such as tran­si­tion load­ing, extreme weight sen­si­tiv­i­ty, and noise reduc­tion.

Doug notes that min­i­miz­ing noise relies heav­i­ly on larg­er pro­peller diam­e­ters rotat­ing at slow­er tip speeds, along­side advanced blade geome­tries. He empha­sizes the crit­i­cal need for ear­ly col­lab­o­ra­tion between pro­peller man­u­fac­tur­ers, elec­tric motor devel­op­ers, and air­craft OEMs to opti­mize over­all sys­tem effi­cien­cy and pack­ag­ing.

Doug also dis­cuss­es reg­u­la­to­ry progress, dig­i­tal engi­neer­ing, and Hartzel­l’s work with part­ners like Beta Tech­nolo­gies. He iden­ti­fies infra­struc­ture, air­space man­age­ment, and pub­lic accep­tance as key hur­dles for the indus­try over the next five years.

Click on the Play but­ton below to lis­ten the episode, which is also avail­able on whichev­er pod­cast plat­form you use.