The Aircraft Electronics Association‘s annual Rate & Labor Survey reveals that the economic realities of supply and demand joined forces in 2018.
With the ADS-B mandate’s Jan. 1, 2020, deadline fast approaching, avionics shops have increased their rates in the face of the overwhelming demand for this equipment — and other upgrades installed during the same downtime — and their finite supplies to technicians and time.
With unemployment at a historic low levels and with many technicians retiring, shops are offering increased wages and significant incentives to attract and retain techs, according to a story in the association’s monthly magazine.
“But finding qualified techs is not the only constraint of business growth,” according to the story. “Of the shops saying their business would remain the same, half reported their facility at its maximum capacity.”
Read the full story here.
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Avionic shop “Demand”? …Hardly !!! Whose demand!!??
It’s more like an FAA’s enforced “welfare relief act” for Avionics Shops, and Avionics manufacturers, via a 2020 faux ADS-B compliance deadline, for an ADS-B system that has been severely conceptually corrupted and “overspecified” (i.e., via absurd NIC, NAC, and DO-260B requirements), that will NEVER work to solve NextGen, will never solve ATS’s cost and inefficiency problem, will never solve the drone problem, and will just ultimately lead to additionally crushing GA, and unnecessarily limiting GA’s airspace access.
There are vastly better ways to have solved all this. But not by FAA’s flailing and failing NextGen plan, or their foolish 2020 ADS-B compliance deadline for the WRONG overbuilt ADS-B system.
So I hope the avionics shops and avionics manufacturers are enjoying this FAA induced “bonanza windfall” at taxpayer, and operator, and pilot’s expense. Because it sure is just one more example why FAA needs to be broken up, and re-constituted from first principles.
Let’s hope Steve Dickson has the courage and strength and support to do it, as the new (hopefully) FAA Administrator (AOA-1).