Meanwhile, many airlines are actively hiring for one particular behind-the-scenes job. Aviation Maintenance Technicians (AMTs) are in high demand throughout the United States and around the world.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates four percent growth for aircraft and avionics mechanics through 2032. Aviation training company CAE projects a need for 138,000 AMTs by 2033. While only two out of the five largest U.S. airlines are currently hiring pilots, all of them are hiring AMTs.

• READ MORE: AMT Day Offers Opportunity to Inspire Next Generation

AMTs play a critical role in the world of aviation and becoming one opens the door to a challenging and rewarding career. Here is what you need to know about being an Aviation Maintenance Technician:

What Is an AMT?

AMT is the term for a licensed aircraft mechanic in the United States. There are two ratings under the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) certification for AMTs: airframe and powerplant. Most jobs require applicants to have both, with the term “A&P” (airframe and powerplant) often being used interchangeably with AMT.

What Do They Do?

The role of an AMT is wide-ranging. AMTs can work on any type of aircraft, ranging from small general aviation planes to widebody jumbo jets. Similarly, AMTs can perform maintenance of all parts of an aircraft. An AMT’s work can consist of anything from making a small pre-departure repair to an airliner at an airport gate to working on an engine overhaul in a hangar.

As a result, there are diverse career prospects for AMTs. While many choose to work for airlines, there are also opportunities to work for other employers like business and charter companies, government bodies, and maintenance contractors.

How Much Do They Make? 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for aircraft mechanics in 2023 was $75,400. The median annual pay for those working at airlines was $101,500

How Do I Become One?

The FAA requires AMTs to meet a set of basic requirements before they can be licensed. Prospective AMTs must be at least 18 years of age and be fluent in English. In addition, they must meet either a training or experience requirement.

AMTs can meet the training requirement by graduating from an FAA-approved Aviation Maintenance Technician school or by completing the Joint Service Aviation Maintenance Technician Certification Council training course for military personnel.

Alternatively, they can demonstrate that they have had 18 months of practical work experience with airframes or powerplants or 30 months of experience with both systems.

After meeting these requirements, an AMT must pass three FAA exams (written, oral, and practical) before they can be licensed.

How Long Is AMT School?

Most AMT training programs are designed to be completed between 14 and 24 months. The exact length can depend on the program and student.

Students learn about a wide variety of topics to prepare them for their future careers. Upon completing AMT school, graduates can apply for the FAA AMT certification.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AirlineGeeks.com.

The post AMT Jobs Could Be Part of Aviation’s Next Hiring Boom appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Taylor built the world’s first aircraft engine from a scratch-paper drawing tacked up to his work bench. He had no formal training and made do with what he had to work with. I am still amazed to this day by what Taylor pulled off.

• READ MORE: The First Aircraft Mechanic

Aircraft mechanics often quietly apply our trade behind the scenes, ensuring the world stays connected via air travel. Each of us has a story to tell.

In thinking of the next generation who will work on airplanes, what story would you tell to inspire them? 

Born Into the Business

Some of us cannot help it; we were born into this life. I didn’t choose the jet life; the jet life chose me. My dad worked for the Beechcraft distributor Hangar One in the 1970s. Once, he took me on a business trip with him through middle Georgia, and I took a ride in a taildragger. My life has not been the same since.

This week, I met Suresh Narayanan, owner and CEO of Jets MRO in Dallas. Narayanan is doing what he can to solve the high turnover in aircraft maintenance by offering company-paid benefits, enhanced work culture, and path to partial ownership. He also has no sales representatives and expects his mechanics to communicate with the customer. 

What drove this CEO to appreciate his mechanics in this manner? His father was a Concorde mechanic for British Airways, and he grew up on a steady diet of airplane stories, which he still recalls fondly.

In March, I spent the day at Airbase Georgia, the local Commemorative Air Force (CAF) squadron. The theme was “Rosie the Riveter” in honor of its Stearman project. I witnessed parents walking with their sons and daughters, checking out the swag at the PX tent, taking photos with reenactors, and getting up close and personal with warbirds Some even had custom dog tags made.

One of the best parts was seeing folks, young and old, stand and stare when the Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless taxied up the grinder, its big, powerful engine pounding out a symphony of 1,200 hp before shutting down. I don’t care who you are, a warbird will freeze time for just a minute while you soak it in.

How many aviators or maintainers crossed over that day? What is their story? Only time can tell.

Answering the Call

Paul Hendrickson was just a small child when his father, Joe Paul, left for World War II. What happened in the war changed him forever. I recently had a conversation with Hendrickson just as he was about to wade into his local trout stream at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Hendrickson recently published a book about his father’s experience during the Iwo Jima campaign called Fighting the Night. He told me the story of a sharecropper’s kid who learned to work on tractors in western Kentucky during the 1930s. One day, a Ford Trimotor flew over the farm, and the boy was hooked.

All those hours working on tractors and Ford Model T’s paid off. Paul Hendrickson recalls his father learning of his new job in the military.

“He had boot camp ahead of him, but the Air Corps Technical School had already promised him a place in its airplane mechanics class,” Hendrickson said.

Tech school began in the fall of 1937 at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois. The elder Hendrickson’s WWII story began as a mechanic but ended with flying night missions in a P-61 Black Widow. Afterward, Joe Paul Hendrickson earned his A&E mechanic license, the precursor to the A&P.

The old Chanute Field became Chanute Air Force Base before closing in 1993. An estimated 2 million students trained there. Each was either a farm boy or a city kid, but they answered the call and had to live their own story. 

Coming Full Circle

Sometimes a story begins with a simple idea. Stacey Rudser, president and scholarship chair of the Association for Women in Aviation Maintenance (AWAM), had such an idea when she enrolled and became the first female to graduate from the Aviation Institute of Maintenance (AIM) in Orlando, Florida, earning her A&P in 2009. You may have seen Rudser’s pink boots sticking out of an avionics bay at some point.

Rudser offered her thoughts on what AMT Day means to her.

“On this AMT Day, AWAM celebrates all the women working to keep our skies safe,” she said. “We are a small but mighty part of this very special industry and are encouraged to see how many women are entering the ranks of schools and transitioning to the military. Thank you to all the mentors, advocates, and allies as we continue to show that aviation maintenance is a vibrant and viable career for all.”

How did Rudser’s maintenance story begin? In 2013, she earned a 767 maintenance training scholarship for UPS through AWAM. Life has a way of coming full circle, and Rudser went from that honor 13 years ago to personally touching the lives of 26 young women through scholarship awards this year.

Now, that is how you pay it forward.

The post AMT Day Offers Opportunity to Inspire Next Generation appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Wednesday’s certification opens the door for Marshall and Mountwest to start offering aviation maintenance technology as a program in their aviation divisions. 

In a statement, Marshall Division of Aviation head Carl Mummert said he is excited to bring this opportunity to students. “We are glad the FAA has approved our joint program between Marshall and MCTC. This program will provide well-paying jobs for our graduates and extend our commitment to developing the aviation industry in West Virginia and the region.”

MCTC will now open enrollment for fall 2022. Each semester the school will accept up to 30 students into the program. 

The AMT program will consist of specialized, hands-on instruction to prepare students for entry into the aviation maintenance industry servicing general aviation or commercial aircraft. Located at the Tri-State Airport (KHTS), in Huntington, West Virginia, the program will provide training opportunities to communities in West Virginia and Ohio, as well as Kentucky. 

The aviation maintenance Associate of Applied Science (A.A.S.) degree will run continuously, year-round, for 18 months. Students will be eligible to sit for the FAA airframe and powerplant certification exams after graduation. A&P certifications are valid in any state and can bring in an average salary of $65,000 annually.
To provide students with the best chance of finding a job after passing the FAA exam, the AMT program is partnered with Delta Air Lines [NYSE: DAL] Technical Operations and Embraer [NYSE: ERJ] (the third largest aircraft manufacturer in the world), as well as many other aircraft manufacturing and maintenance companies.

The post FAA Approves Part 147 Certification for Two Schools appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

When Stacey Rudser graduated high school, she didn’t know what she wanted to do for a career. She waited tables and worked in customer service for a couple of years. Realizing time was slipping past and she needed to “grow up and do something,” Rudser found herself searching the internet for how to be an aircraft mechanic.

Seeds planted by her Junior ROTC commander, who had served as an aircraft maintenance officer in the Air Force, and her time tinkering with a ’65 Mustang that her grandfather restored took root and she enrolled in airframe and powerplant (A&P) school. 

“I felt like maintenance was attainable. I knew it was a lot of reading, paperwork, and critical thinking, and those were all things that I really enjoyed. And then, getting to hit airplanes with hammers, who wants to say no to that? It’s great fun,” says Rudser, now an aircraft maintenance technician (AMT) at Thales in Orlando, Florida, and a director for the Association of Women in Aviation Maintenance (AWAM).

Upon entering A&P school, the gender disparity in the field struck her immediately. In fact, in 2009 she became the first woman to graduate from the Aviation Institute of Maintenance in Orlando, Florida, which opened in 2006.  

The 2021 U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics, a study published annually by the FAA, reports 2.62 percent of certificated aircraft mechanics are women (or 8,231), up from 2.56 percent (7,860) in 2020.

“We’re excited because we’ve [women] gained a partial percentage point,” Rudser says. 

According to Women in Aviation: A Workforce Report 2021 Edition, authored by Rebecca Lutte, the aviation occupation least represented by women is maintenance technicians, followed closely by airline pilots where women make up 4.6 percent of the workforce. Even more concerning, the growth rate of women in the career field is negligible. 

“Over a span of 60 years, the percentage of women commercial pilots has changed at a rate of about 1 percent a decade and mechanics have increased at about half that rate,” Lutte—an aviation workforce development researcher and associate professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Aviation Institute—writes in the report. Meanwhile, women make up 47 percent of the U.S. workforce, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020). 

Rudser is focused on changing this paradigm with her work both at AWAM, where she leads the scholarship and mentorship programs, and as a member of the FAA’s inaugural Women in Aviation Advisory Board (WIAAB), which is tasked with developing strategies to improve female recruitment and retention for the industry.

“I don’t ever expect to see women hit 50 percent of aircraft technicians, but 10, 15, 20, 25, somewhere in there,” says Rudser. “With the right outreach and frankly, with the right marketing, and then add in the right support…a culture change in the industry as a whole is going to drive a big shift in being able to sustain a diverse workforce.” 

Women Can Fill the Gap

With an aging workforce and airline travel demand that’s rebounded to a pre-COVID-19 fervor, the industry can’t afford to be exclusive. According to the Aviation Technician Education Council (ATEC) 2021 Pipeline Report, 36 percent of AMTs are age 60 or older. Given the number of retiring technicians, attrition, and the predicted MRO needs of a growing commercial aviation fleet, ATEC projects a deficit of 12,000 technicians in the U.S. by 2041. And this deficit doesn’t account for the need for AMTs in the rotorcraft, business aviation, general aviation, electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, and other new aviation segments. 

Rudser says women are a natural recruitment field to help fill the current and future demand for technicians. And there are positive signs that this is starting to happen. According to ATEC, AMT or A&P schools reported 11 percent of their 2021 graduates were women, up from a previous trend of 8 percent.

It can be a challenge, though, to retain women in the workforce. “I hate to say it,” Rudser says, “but there’s a huge attrition rate for women from the time they start A&P school.” 

Rudser cites long, inflexible work schedules, night shifts, and a discriminatory work culture “stuck in the 1950s” as challenges to retaining women AMTs.

Fighting Against the Culture

“Unfortunately, harassment and discrimination in the industry are still very real, problematic topics,” Rudser says. “For me, it’s ranged everywhere from microaggressions up to being sexually assaulted at work.”

Rudser left the industry for almost a year before getting a call from some friends—male allies—who had moved to a different employer. They encouraged her to come back, and she did. She also got involved with AWAM. Today, after working for more than a decade in heavy and line maintenance, including lead and supervisory roles, she’s back “in her toolbox” and running her own business, Rudser Aviation Consulting.

Her company, launched in the fall of 2021, offers aviation management consulting services, computer-based, aircraft-specific type training, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) courses for maintenance technicians. According to Rudser, educating the AMT workforce about DEI in a way that’s understandable and makes sense to them, and building a culture of allyship and sponsorship that supports women in their careers, are all part of the solution.  

But growing female representation in aviation maintenance starts with building awareness of the career. 

From Toolbox to C-Suite

“An overarching theme in the technician shortage of our industry, right now, is the fact that people are unaware of the career,” Rudser says. “You have this wonderful hive around an aircraft when you’re having that experience as a passenger; one of the components you just don’t see is maintenance…By nature, it’s supposed to be an invisible career.” 

This lack of visibility doesn’t help when it comes to attracting and recruiting new AMTs. AWAM is working to shine a spotlight on the career through its chapter outreach programs that target girls age 10 and even younger. Elementary school is a prime age, Rudser says, to introduce aviation maintenance as a career path, in order to counteract a larger societal issue where girls are discouraged from pursuing STEM fields. 

“What’s not being communicated well by guidance counselors, or two parents, is the fact that aviation maintenance is not the career that it used to be,” she says. “Yes, it’s a blue-collar job. Yes, it’s hands-on, but it’s so much more…There is a pathway from your toolbox to the C-suite.” 

And, Rudser says women bring unique skill sets to the profession that are needed, including a keen attention to detail for both the technical and paperwork sides of the job—and a humane leadership style. Aviation maintenance environments can be “rude” and autocratic; women with soft skills of communication and empathy introduce these qualities to an environment where it didn’t exist, she says. “It has changed the frontline culture where women are leaders.” 

Easing Financial Barriers

Working to improve accessibility to the career, AWAM partners with businesses to provide scholarships for women who are interested in or already working in aviation maintenance. There are scholarships that fund college tuition and others that pay for certification exams, tools, and technical training/familiarization courses. There are even scholarships for work pants and safety footwear. 

“It’s my constant goal to have as far reaching and robust a scholarship program to cover the whole person, not just tuition,” Rudser says.

This year, AWAM will award $82,254 in scholarships as it celebrates the 25th anniversary of its founding at the Women in Aviation International (WAI) Conference set for March 17-19. 

JuliAnne Miller, a single mother and the only woman in her graduating class of A&Ps at Lansing Community College last August, says the scholarships she received from AWAM, WAI, and her college were instrumental to her success. The valedictorian of her class, she was also named the ATEC 2021 James Rardon Aviation Maintenance Technician Student of the Year. 

A fleet services compliance coordinator at Envoy Air, Miller isn’t done with her education. Shortly, she’ll be adding bachelor’s degrees in legal and policy studies and aviation science to her resume. Already a paralegal, she ultimately wants to marry the legal and technical sides of aviation to make a positive impact for aviation safety policy.

“Without the scholarships there’s no way I would have been able to go back and do it,” says Miller, who started A&P school after working jobs as a waitress and at a dog kennel while raising her daughter to age 16.

Amanda Colón, an aircraft support engineer at Textron (NYSE: TXT), says scholarships were what drew her to AWAM as well. She received three tuition/training scholarships, and funding that paid for her written and practical exams.

“Through their scholarships I was able to pay for all my tests to become fully certified and I was able to buy my first set of professional tools,” Colón says.

Mentorship Is Another Key

A member of AWAM since 2018, now Colón gives back to the organization as a mentor. “I have to. The industry has given me so much, and AWAM is awesome,” she says.

The mentorship program that Rudser spearheaded and leads pairs working professionals with AMT students or entry-career technicians. AWAM currently has 38 participants in the program. “Having those mentors and those resources are the biggest help in retaining the aviation workforce,” Rudser says.

Colón also supports women in the industry as a contributing author to Latinas in Aviation, a book and an organization focused on supporting women of Hispanic descent in the aviation industry. “All of the proceeds go toward the Pilotina project—to help other Latinas in the industry with scholarships,” she says. Some of her co-authors are now mentors for her. 

While working in a male-dominated field has its challenges, Colón says it’s all worth it in the end. “It’s a passion-driven job,” she says. “I don’t know where I’d be without aviation. And every woman I talk to, no matter if they’re flight, maintenance, or ATC, they all say the exact same thing.” 

It’s this passion that fuels Rudser’s efforts to support women in aviation through her involvement with AWAM, the WIAAB, and with her consulting company. “I’m not going to lie, a lot of times it can feel very quixotic, what we’re trying to do…but to see motion in the industry at large really feels great,” she says. Rudser, along with the entire WIAAB, will present a report to the FAA outlining strategies and recommendations to encourage and support women pursuing careers in the aviation industry during a public live stream on March 21.

The post Building Tomorrow’s Aviation Mechanic Workforce with Women appeared first on FLYING Magazine.