From takeoff to landing: North Carolina's expanding aerospace and aviation industry supplies the technology and equipment that keeps the world flying.

• Author: Bivins, D. Lawrence
• Position: FIRST IN FLIGHT - Company overview

As an engineer eager to make a mark on his field, Scott Bledsoe moved from North Carolina to Italy, Kansas, Georgia and California to design safety and efficiency systems for aircraft. "Being an aerospace worker, I've always had to go where the work is," Bledsoe says. In 2010, almost two decades after the Winston-Salem native received his degree from N.C. State University in Raleigh, he honed a business plan and gathered the resources for his own startup. "It was the first time I got to choose where I would live."

Still, Bledsoe needed a backdrop that made business sense, so he opened his Blue Force Technologies Inc. in Morrisville, whose proximity to Research Triangle Park offers advantages such as access to customers and suppliers, support from state government and a pool of talent while also satisfying his desire to be near home. The aerospace and aviation industry he found on his return was a far cry from the one he left in the 1990s. "When I moved out of the state 15 years ago there really wasn't much of an aerospace industry in North Carolina. That has really changed.

In the state where human flight was pioneered more than a century ago, aviation and aerospace companies continue to reach new heights. These businesses work in every facet of the industry, from original designs to repairs, many times serving as each other's customers and suppliers. The roster stretches from Wood Dale, III.-based AAR Corp.'s AAR Aircraft Services Inc., which makes air-cargo loading systems in Goldsboro, to Fairfield. Conn.-based General Electric Corp.'s Unison Engine Components Inc. in Asheville, a leading supplier of parts for turbine engines.

Blue Force is one of many innovation-minded startups with growth prospects here. Though small, with just nine employees and annual sales in the low seven figures, the company has high hopes. It is part of Reston. Va.-based defense and homeland-security contractor TenX Group--which purchased a stake in the company a year after Bledsoe started it--and provides engineering, prototyping and precision machining. "We specialize in projects that require a bit more engineering to put them over the top." It sells to Chicago-based The Boeing Co. and is working on projects for Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp. and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is part of the Department of Defense. Blue Force is relying partly on North Carolina's history to carve out its place in the industry. "A lot of what we do with composites is similar to what companies in North Carolina used to do with textiles. You don't get to build those types of partnerships unless you're in a technology region."

Interaction between aerospace and aviation companies in the state isn't by chance; it's part of North Carolina's strategy for developing the sector from within. "North Carolina discovered that if you look beneath the industry's big players you see that a large part of the supply chain is already here," says Will Austin. director of government affairs at Cary-based Lord Corp., a developer of adhesive, coating and...