FLYING Magazine
Honeywell Aerospace now stands alone.
The company on Monday began trading independently on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker HONA after spreading its wings and separating from Honeywell’s core business, which is now a pure-play automation provider. Honeywell announced the split in February 2025 and last year spun off its advanced materials business.
Shares of HONA on the Nasdaq opened at $236.78 apiece. The new company’s CEO, Jim Currier, told CNBC on Monday that the business is focused on investing in its supplier base to boost production of power, navigation, avionics, and other systems for aircraft, rotorcraft, and spacecraft platforms.
The spinoff also came after pressure from activist investor Elliot Investment Management, which took a $5 billion stake in Honeywell and pushed for the separation of the aerospace unit.
With more than 36,000 employees and relationships with marquee aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus, Honeywell Aerospace immediately becomes one of the world’s largest aerospace suppliers.
“As an independent aerospace and defense company, we are fully dedicated to our mission to protect and advance the promise of flight to create a safer, more connected world,” Currier said Monday. “We are poised to deliver significant value for our customers and shareholders by leveraging a best-in-class operating system to expand our leading market positions.”
Honeywell expects the three-way split to streamline each business for growth as it sees rising demand in commercial and defense aviation. The move mirrors General Electric’s split into aerospace, energy, and healthcare businesses in 2021, which made GE Aerospace a leading supplier of engines.
Evidencing that demand, Honeywell Aerospace in May agreed to invest $500 million toward ramping up its production of navigation systems, actuators, and electronic warfare systems for the Pentagon. In April, the firm reshored its production of F124 engines from Taiwan to Phoenix as it seeks to capitalize on the U.S. Navy’s next-generation trainer search. (The F124 powers the Beechcraft M-346N, a candidate to replace the Navy’s T-45 Goshawks.)
In his recent report on the air transport industry, Willie Walsh, the outgoing director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), estimated that supply chain snarls cost airlines a combined $11 billion in 2025. That creates an opportunity for Honeywell Aerospace to eliminate inefficiencies.
“The aircraft order backlog is over 18,000. And the average fleet age has reached a record 15.2 years,” Walsh wrote. “Moreover, being short over 5,000 more fuel-efficient replacement aircraft that airlines had counted on, means missed efficiency gains, not to mention higher lease rates and increased maintenance costs.”
Honeywell Aerospace Spreads Its Wings
Aerospace was the largest of Honeywell’s three branches. In 2025, it recorded net sales of $17.4 billion. That broke down to $6.8 billion for electronic solutions, $5.4 billion for engine and power systems, and $5.2 billion for control systems—the three core units of the new company.
Per a presentation from Honeywell Aerospace’s June 3 investor day, the company’s avionics and navigation systems power more than 250 in-production aircraft platforms and about 90 percent of all aircraft flying worldwide.
At the investor day, executives said the new business is targeting $6.5 billion in earnings and $4 billion in free cash flow by 2030. Per Reuters, it expects sales growth of 7 to 9 percent in 2026, with free cash flow of $1 billion to $1.5 billion in the second half of the year.
Honeywell Aerospace will remain a key supplier of engines, avionics, flight control and navigation systems, and other technologies for Boeing, Airbus, and other major manufacturers.
It also aims to deliver electric propulsion systems for a new generation of aircraft. Per the company’s March Securities and Exchange Commission filing, it plans to embrace “breakthrough initiatives” such as electrification and autonomy. According to the filing, the idea is to “increase content on current generation platforms, support next generation platforms, enable access to new markets, and increase aftermarket opportunities.”
Honeywell’s Anthem flight deck, compact fly-by-wire system, and autonomous navigation technology are already popular choices for some of the leading developers of electric, autonomous, and even supersonic aircraft.