Meggitt

Meggitt built its reputation as one of the aerospace industry's most important suppliers of components you never see but always rely on. Founded in 1947 and long headquartered in Coventry, England, the company grew through decades of careful acquisition into a business organized around a handful of specialties, and in September 2022 it became a subsidiary of Parker Hannifin, the large American industrial and aerospace group, following a 6.3 billion pound takeover. It now operates as Parker Meggitt inside Parker's aerospace division, though the Meggitt name and much of its original product engineering carried straight through. Wheels and brakes are the most visible part of the business. Meggitt is one of the world's leading suppliers of aircraft wheels, brakes, and brake control systems, with a history stretching back to the first multi-disc steel aircraft brakes in the 1930s and a more recent claim to building the Ebrake, the first electric braking system to fly on a commercial aircraft without a hydraulic backup, used on the Airbus A220.

That expertise carries into military platforms as well as commercial jets. Fire protection and control systems form a second major line, covering aircraft fire and overheat detection, fuel and bleed air control valves, heat exchangers, and ground refueling equipment, much of it drawing on decades of integration experience across both defense and commercial aircraft. Meggitt's sensing systems business, built up through acquisitions including Endevco in 1992 and Vibro-Meter in 1998, makes vibration sensors, pressure sensors, proximity sensors, and engine condition monitoring systems sold under the Vibro-Meter brand, technology used to detect the earliest signs of mechanical trouble in jet engines and other rotating machinery before it becomes a failure. A 1999 acquisition of Whittaker Corporation added repair and overhaul capability and deepened the company's aftermarket business, the unglamorous but reliably profitable work of keeping fielded systems running. On the defense side specifically, Meggitt makes the Banshee family of aerial target drones, used by military services to train air defense crews and test missile systems against a realistic moving target, along with polymer seals, composite structures, and energetics components used across combat aircraft and munitions.

At the time of the Parker acquisition, Meggitt employed around 9,000 people across sites in the UK, US, and elsewhere, with roughly half its revenue historically coming from North American customers. As part of Parker Hannifin, a much larger public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Meggitt's individual businesses continue to supply military and commercial aerospace customers, though the company's independent public reporting ended with the acquisition. The wheels and brakes business was required to be divested from Parker's existing operations as a condition of UK antitrust approval, underscoring how central that particular line remained to competition regulators even after the broader deal cleared.