Duncan Aviation looks forward as it marks 70th birthday

The family firm, though rooted in Nebraska, has become a national, even an international presence in MRO.

Todd Duncan points to a recent $89 million investment in its overhaul centre for Pratt & Whitney Canada engines in Lincoln, Nebraska as evidence that his family firm is committed to being in the business for decades to come and supporting operators “tip to tail”.

Duncan Aviation – which is celebrating its 70th birthday this year – officially unveiled the 3,300sq m (36,000sq ft) extension in June, three years after the RTX subsidiary named the company a designated overhaul facility for PW300 and PW500 powerplants.

The new centre adds to Duncan’s established 3,700sq m engine routine-maintenance shop and includes 12 bays to handle the entire disassembly, inspection, repair, and rebuild process.

“Most of what we make this year, we’ll invest back into the business and keep getting better at what we do,” says Todd Duncan, who has been chairman of the maintenance, repair and overhaul specialist since 2007 – his father and grandfather led the company before him.

Duncan has been in Lincoln since 1963 (it actually began in Omaha, where founder Donald Duncan ran a Beechcraft dealership). However, over the past 40 years Duncan has become a national player, with three main sites and some 30 satellites at airports around the USA.

Its appointment as a PW300 and PW500 overhaul facility enhances a portfolio that spans landing gears, avionics, cabin refurbishments and aircraft painting, with authorisations from all the big airframers. “Our goal is to service the entire aircraft,” says Todd Duncan.

In addition to sites in Lincoln, Battle Creek in Michigan, and Provo, Utah, much time-sensitive MRO work, including in avionics, is done from its satellites, where 220 staff including rapid response teams are based, and which have round-the-clock parts availability.

This came into its own during this year’s FIFA World Cup, which saw a flurry of business aviation activity as wealthy soccer fans followed national teams around a succession of stadia. Duncan claimed to have a “strategic footprint” covering all 11 US host cities.

That includes Las Vegas, home of this week’s NBAA-BACE, where Duncan has avionics specialists based at Harry Reid International, supporting flight departments and other aircraft users with operations in or regularly flying into the city.

Duncan is keen to attract more international custom, something the new P&W capabilities should make easier. However, while 20% of its customers are from outside the USA, Todd Duncan suggests it is unlikely the business will expand its footprint into Europe, for instance.

“We never say never, but Battle Creek is only a 1h 15min flight from Teterboro [one of the main gateways into the USA for international operators],” he says. “We get a lot of business out of Western Europe into Michigan, so the need isn’t there.”

Farming roots

According to the history section on its web site, Duncan’s roots go back beyond 70 years, to the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when Iowa farmer Donald Duncan, who had learned to fly during the conflict, began buying and trading surplus military aircraft.

That led to him buying into the Beechcraft distributorship in Omaha in 1956 – the company’s official birth. He opened a second facility, in Lincoln, seven years later and became a distributor for an upstart and exciting new brand of business jets, called Learjet.

“It is quite possible that [founder] Bill Lear would never have been able to develop the world famous Learjet without Donald’s backing and ingenuity,” states the item on Duncan’s web site.

When new Learjet owner, Gates Rubber, cancelled all US distributorships in 1967, Duncan was kept on as the world’s first authorised service centre for the brand. Although it continued to trade used Learjets very successfully, this marked the pivot into MRO.

Donald Duncan died unexpectedly in 1981, although his son Robert had become president 13 years earlier. Robert Duncan led a major expansion of the business, acquiring a succession of authorised service centre designations, and expanding into avionics.

In 1996, Aaron Hilkemann was brought in to run the business, overseeing Duncan’s first major acquisition, Kal-Aero, a competitor in Battle Creek. This was followed in 2020 by a $70 million investment in a full-service facility in Provo to give Duncan its third full-service site.

Todd Duncan maintains the company’s family values are reflected in its relationship with its staff. “Over the good and bad times, what I have always told our team members is that service and parts brought us together, and it is all about the people you work with,” he says.

Duncan employs about 3,200, some 700 of whom have been there at least 25 years. “This is a people business,” Todd Duncan adds. “My dad taught me our employees are the focus, the interface with the customers, and there is a real sense of pride in what they do.”

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