WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senators Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced the Aviation Maintenance Workforce Development Pilot Program March 7, 2018. The bipartisan legislation is designed to help close the skills gap and fill aviation maintenance jobs.
“Our aviation industry needs skilled workers and the aviation maintenance industry provides high-paying, high-skilled jobs across the country,” Inhofe said. “Aviation is an economic multiplier, connecting local communities and cities in support of commercial activity and generating tourism revenue. We can’t afford to let these skilled jobs go unfilled. This bill will make it possible to close the skills gap by incentivizing businesses, labor groups, educational institutions, and local governments to develop innovative ways to recruit and educate the next generation of America’s aviation workforce.”
“This commonsense bipartisan bill is a win-win for Connecticut companies and Connecticut jobs,” said Blumenthal. “The measure establishes federal grants that will support Connecticut employers in our state’s aviation sector, aiding recruitment and retention of technical workers to address the chronic skills gap in the aviation maintenance industry.”
“The aviation maintenance industry contributes $44 billion to our economy, but is struggling from a severe shortage of skilled workers,” added Moran. “Our legislation would encourage collaboration between public and private entities to issue grants to support technical education and career development on a local level. Our aviation industry is only as strong as its workforce – incentivizing people across America to pursue technical careers in this field will help fill good-paying jobs.”
“Across the country, there is a severe shortage of workers with the skills to repair airplanes,” Cantwell said. “These good-paying jobs are essential to keep Washington state at the forefront of the 21st century commercial aviation industry. This bill will create and expand training programs, like the one at Everett Community College, to skill Washingtonians to meet the needs of our state’s industry-leading aerospace businesses.”
The legislation was praised by the aviation industry.
“We’re extremely grateful that Senators Inhofe, Blumenthal, Moran, and Cantwell have taken up this cause,” said Christian A. Klein, executive vice president of the Aeronautical Repair Station Association. “If there’s one issue keeping our members awake at night, it’s where to find the next generation of technical talent. This bill is an important step in the right direction. It will incentivize local cooperation to develop new aerospace professionals and help veterans and others transition to careers in this high-tech, growing sector.”
“The National League of Cities thanks Senators Inhofe, Blumenthal, Moran and Cantwell for their bipartisan leadership on this important piece of workforce legislation,” said National League of Cities President Mayor Mark Stodola of Little Rock, Arkansas. “We must close the gap between supply and demand across all infrastructure sectors to ensure our citizens are prepared for high quality jobs that provide critical services to our communities. The skill sets for aviation maintenance are vital to the economic vitality of cities across America.”
“AAR welcomes and strongly supports the measure introduced by Senator Inhofe,” said David Stroch, chairman and CEO of AAR. “As the largest independent employer of aviation maintenance technicians in the United States, we are all too familiar with the challenges the aviation maintenance industry faces in hiring skilled workers. This measure will help us begin training the additional employees that we need and can put to work immediately in our facilities in Oklahoma City, Miami, Rockford, Ill., Indianapolis, and Duluth, Minn. We appreciate Senator Inhofe’s leadership on this issue.”
“Serving the needs of the nation’s aviation industry for 90 years, Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology supports Senator Inhofe’s legislation to establish an Aviation Maintenance Workforce Development Pilot Program,” said Dr. Dan Peterson, president and CEO of Spartan College. “There is a global demand for well-qualified aviation technicians. To keep pace, this bill will afford service providers the opportunity to develop innovative new training programs and provide vital financial support to those seeking career employment in the field of aviation maintenance.”
“The Aviation Maintenance Workforce Development Pilot Program represents an important step forward for America’s aerospace industry,” said David Silver, Vice President, Civil Aviation for the Aerospace Industries Association. “Today’s success is built on our 2.4 million employees. We must maintain that strength for the future. This legislation, by focusing on technical acumen, promotes the workforce of tomorrow and solidifies the foundation of our nation’s security and prosperity.”
I was an Aircraft Mechanic in the Air Force, after I was discharged I went to Tech school for two years on the GI Bill. I finished getting my A&P license in 1976 and got a job immediately in Alaska. After four yrs I was laid off when the logging industry which we supported was shut down for Environmental reasons. I moved back down to Washington State. FBO’s were only offering $6.00 an hour, but ironically the Logging industry in Wash was paying $12.50 an hour to start. With a family to support, I had to leave the Aviation trade and work as a logger. Which I did until a logging accident put me in a wheelchair in 1992 for life. I am just now getting back into Aviation as a hobby at 66 yrs old. I can afford to be an A&P again, and am rebuilding a 1947 PA-12…
I don’t feel this is good news at all! It is NOT the government’s responsibility to step in and solve every problem that comes along, using our money to do it! When there are shortages in any job sector, it is because the jobs don’t pay enough, or because those needing the workers are not being creative enough. If companies need more A&Ps, maybe they should consider funding the training, in exchange for a guaranteed number of years of work from the scholarship recipient. Hospitals have done this before, during nurse shortages; paid for nursing school for individuals who would then work for the hospital. The public should not have to foot the bill for doing the private sector’s work!
Everyone is fretting over a looming shortage of aviation mechanics and pay … and rightly so. No one is talking about a corresponding number of IA’s available to relicense small GA airplanes. I see this as a larger issue for most of us here. Commercial operations are one thing but — as the ‘old’ aviation mechanics age and give it up … who is going to be around to help us keep our airplanes in license?
For more than five years (sic), a very large Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) worked on redefining Part 23 of the FAR’s. Their final report to the FAA was written on June 5, 2013. It contained “Recommendations for increasing the safety of small general aviation airplanes certificated to 14 CFR part 23” and was provided to the Manager, FAA Small Airplane Directorate, in Kansas City. Their document was 346 pages long and had some pretty darned good ideas. One of them, covered in Appendix G-4 was “Creation and implementation of a new Primary Non-Commercial (airworthiness) Category under 14 CFR Part 21 (not to be confused with the current Primary category). The essence of that recommendation was to allow owners of small GA airplanes to relicense them in the ‘P-NC’ category to allow maintenance by either a licensed A&P mechanic or to allow individual owners to be formally trained to do it themselves. An excellent idea which has basis in a rule created by Transport Canada on April 17, 2000 allowing owner maintenance of certain small GA aircraft in a manner similar to what we know in the U.S. as E-AB. Well … guess what … the FAA rewrote FAR Part 23 and it has no such tenet. The FAA, et al, are all patting themselves on the back for the Part 23 rewrite yet owners of small GA airplanes are still suffering. And that was BEFORE the current mechanic shortage.
The FAA is off-loading many of it’s responsibilities onto others. It’s widely publicized that the ‘owner’ of an airplane has the primary responsibility of maintaining it. So why didn’t they include this excellent idea into the rewrite? I don’t know; they should have.
MY idea is to allow A&P’s (without IA) to relicense Class I airplanes. Maybe — if the FAA is SO worried about their darned ‘safety’ — require A&P’s doing this sort of work to take an online course or equivalent. As an A&P with 40 years experience AND GA airplane owner, I cannot relicense my own airplanes because I do not have an IA. Ridiculous.
I don’t understand, if you are an A&P, why don’t you just take the next step and get your IA? Your idea of requiring the A&P to take an online course or equivalent to relicense airplanes- that opportunity is already there. Have 3 years experience as an A&P and go take the IA test. Seems like it is “ridiculous” that you don’t.
This problem you bring up about owner maintenance for Cert. Aircraft is one to write Congressional people about and push for. I’d bet that EAA would get behind it.
This would allow such an aircraft to be acquired in Canada and reregistered in the US. As I understand it today, a user maintained certificated aircraft from Canada can’t be operated in the USofA.
It would seem that an extensive Annual should solve that problem, but apparently not. So if the FAA gets told to get your ducks in a row, they will fix the problem.
And Congress has done this kind of thing many times. FO required to have an ATP for scheduled airlines brought by FAA not being able to address the problem of the twin turbo-prop crash at Buffalo. Part 135 was brought to you by Congress because the FAA couldn’t figure out how to do anything to stop the typical Commercial pilot from taking pax and then crashing because they got into weather beyond their abilities. The change to the medical and Pilots’ bill of rights brought to you by Congress, etc.
Certificating your aircraft in Primary category is allowed and will allow much more “owner” performed maintenance than the preventive list in 43 appendix “A”. This is seldom done but it is possible and the aircraft my go back and forth between Primary and Standard category
That said very few owners I know will do the allowable preventive maintenance, they will only complain of cost, and that “something” must be done. I am an A&P,IA, that welcomes “owner assist” very few wish to get dirty.
After Viet Nam, I used my VA bennies to take the aircraft tech. course at Embry-Riddle. Thereafter, I took a job in mid-1972 with a Cessna dealership and flight school. My starting pay was $3 per hour. I couldn’t kick, as I quickly discovered that despite school training and my license, there was so very much I didn’t know. I stuck with that dealership for 10 years and obtained my IA, finally making $7 per hour, which even at that time was hardly a living wage. I found it incredible that car dealership mechanics could afford to come to our flight school to learn to fly, when I’d have a hard time gassing up a 150.
I got my A&P license in 1979, I was offered a job starting around $15.00 an hour. I took different direction and went to college. 39 years later I was contacted by a recruiter offering a job starting at $15.00 an hour. Not much of a future.
I got my A&P in 1962, worked 4 years. I could not support my family, quit and went to college. I never look back. I fly often , find mechanics still struggle to make a living.
Highly compensated??? This just shows how out of touch Washington really is. In general aviation a mechanic is lucky to make $10 an hour. Anyone bright enough to fix airplanes is bright enough to see you can’t make a living in ga. Some try but soon get smashed by the faa, owners that won’t pay to keep their airplane airworthy, or simply starving to death. Then there is the airline jobs… you will work midnights, holidays, weekends, go on road trips away from family for weeks on end, and always in the worst weather. Why is there a shortage of aircraft mechanics? Because any one with half a brain can see that it is not worth the personal cost. The regulatory liability alone will destroy you financially in one incident. It is one of the most thankless professions I know of. In today’s corporate world where everything is run by accountants maintenance is a “liability” and everyone hates to see us coming because it will only cost money. I have been an a&p for 29 years. My career has made me live where I didn’t want to, miss countless milestones with my children, and struggle, barely scraping by, for years. Can a grant from Washington to some multimillion dollar school or company fix this shortage? No! More of our tax dollars wasted on a failed government subsidy.
If Washington wants to solve this they could start by giving us the due respect every other nation in the world but the USA has already done. Every other nation calls aircraft mechanics engineers. Of course this designation would have a government classification of skilled labor, requiring the government to upgrade our profession from unskilled labor and have to pay all government mechanics accordingly. Money better spent than subsidizing multimillion dollar organizations.
Hope I never have to work with you! Your attitude indicator in broke!
Maybe you should. Some of us with attitude problems are tired of government interfering and making problems worse.
What hasn’t been said here is what insurance for an A&P is and what it is for someone with inspection authority.
Now, how much do you have to charge per hour to pay for that insurance policy or do you go naked? I know how this works because I owned a consulting company at one time in the IT world.
The IT industry has had stagnant wages for decades thanks to the H1b program and other similar visas. Thank you congress.
Why does a good diesel truck mechanic make $95 an hour and my son with an A&P works for the navy rebuilding center barrels for the F-18 and makes $28 an hour? He’s quitting the feds to go to Bell school in Texas to work on Heli’s And get his pilot’s license.
$95 an hour my be the shops rate but no Diesel tech makes that much , I have worked for the same company for 19 years as an auto tech and only make $24 per flat rate hr
Where do these people come from?We currently have every shop in town claiming that they have a shop full of guys making a $100k but the average is $35k so how many are making absolutely nothing? Auto technicians are the hardest position to fill in 42 countries according to 41,700 hiring managers but that didn’t stop Obama from signing an XO to cut my pay in half again. https://www.autoserviceworld.com/1003794907-2/
This is not a legislative problem, it’s a basic economics problem. If there is a huge shortage of mechanics it’s because there is not enough incentive, increase the compensation to what it should be and the problem will solve itself.
So true! A tech can make $50k+ at a highline auto dealershp – WHY then would one work in a “high risk” GA gig – of course; PASSION?!?!? Hello!
Yep. I’ve been an automotive/truck mechanic for 28 years and am slowly working towards my A&P certificate in my spare time. My motivation to do so is for purely self serving reasons – to save money by working on my own aircraft – as I’d be an absolute fool to take a HUGE cut in pay to pursue a full time position in aviation. Money makes the world go round, make it worth my while to invest in the certification and to take on the massive increase in responsibility/liability and I’d do it in a heartbeat, otherwise……..
At least there are a few “realist” who identify with this plight!