Lycoming’s Ian Walsh: “What I want people to understand about Lycoming is that we are focused, first, pure and simple, on safety.”

If airplanes have personalities, so do the engines that power them and, by extension, the companies that make those engines. Traditionally, Teledyne Continental has been known as an innovator, testing the market with cutting-edge products such as the water-cooled Voyager engine and, more recently, the PowerLink FADEC system.

In contrast, Lycoming has been more of a staid presence, with a reputation for delivering reliable engines and uniform parts and supplies for the aftermarket, but with a conservative reticence toward radically new products. That settled notion was set on its ear in early 2002 when Lycoming announced that it was recalling some 400 crankshafts for high-horsepower six-cylinder engines. The recall eventually blossomed to…