Maintenance Schools:
Look for the Customer

We need to get our act together in this industry or we're going to be in a world of hurt when we realize that few young people are joining the aviation maintenance field. The reasons that young people are shying away from aircraft maintenance careers are many, but there is one cause that is often overlooked and is probably a larger factor than we realize.

Our schools are disconnected from reality.

The schools that train aircraft mechanics in the U.S. have curricula that are geared toward one thing: teaching students what they need to know to pass the tests for certification as an FAA Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic.

The FAA sets the requirements in the Part 147 rules, and the schools for the most part meet those requirements. There's been plenty of criticism of the Part 147 rules and plenty of attempts by schools to deliver a better learning experience to their students. I believe most A&P schools do more than the regulatory minimum, so student mechanics learn the fundamentals at A&P school but little that is specific to any particular aircraft, engine, or component type. Companies that hire A&P school graduates know that they will need to spend time and money bringing new-hire A&Ps up to speed and onsequently the pay rates for fresh A&Ps are fairly low.

There is a simple solution to this problem that we as an industry ought to consider. The answer is to look for the customer.

In an article in the September 6, 2004 issue of Forbes (Bumper-to-Bumper Education, page 77) writer Jonathan Fahey tells the story of Universal Technical Institute, a company that trains auto mechanics. The Institute's leaders discovered that viewing the student as UTI's customer was counterproductive. The real customer of a technician training school is the end-user, the company that hires those technicians.

So UTI changed its approach to the end-user, the auto dealerships that desperately need new technical talent. Instead of hoping that students graduate with the needed skills, UTI now meets twice a year with auto and truck manufacturers and dealers to find out what technology is coming in their products and what students ought to be learning so they're ready for action when they graduate.

What UTI is doing--and it's just what any business is supposed to do--is paying attention to its customers, figuring out what they want, and delivering.

The subjects taught by A&P schools are mandated and driven by the FAA, not by the industry that the schools serve. This is backwards. The schools ought to be teaching specific knowledge that the industry needs the students to have when they graduate.

I do think that the U.S. system is a good one, because we have an enormously flexible aircraft technician workforce that can be deployed in a variety of aviation workplaces. This is because all A&Ps start with the same core knowledge.

But we need to modify the system slightly to allow and encourage the teaching of aircraft-specific knowledge, so that A&P schools can better serve their real customers.

The simple solution is for the schools to continue teaching to meet the requirements of Part 147. But that teaching should be done quicker and using fewer of the total hours that the FAA requires (which might require a rule change). The remaining hours could be used to teach specifics. What specifics?

The schools simply need to talk to the companies that employ their students and find out what knowledge is needed. The schools should create some two- to four-week classes that teach specific knowledge on the aircraft that are found at airports within, say, a 50-mile radius. If a student is interested in a commercial aircraft career, then he or she would select the airliner track and take a class on Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, and Canadair RJ airplanes. A general aviation-oriented student would opt for the Beech/Cessna/Cirrus/Piper track or the Citation/Falcon/Gulfstream track to work on corporate aircraft. Each track would offer a choice of classes on specific aircraft and engines.

There probably wouldn't enough time to teach everything a student needed to know about these aircraft to be truly useful as fresh mechanics, but smart schools would offer additional courses that students could take after graduating to further their knowledge.

We know that there is a market for this knowledge because there are large and highly successful companies that have prospered by delivering exactly the kind of training that their customers want, Alteon, FlightSafety International, and CAE SimuFlite. It's somewhat surprising that the 150 or so A&P schools in the U.S. haven't figured this out yet.