Collaborating to fill maintenance gap
GA shops, owners impacted by technician shortage
It may sound like a traditional family-business story: The aging parents who founded the company are ready to retire, but their children lack the interest or talent required to take the reins. But the widespread aging-out phenomenon and demographic shifts affecting the aviation industry are more complicated—perhaps enough to compete with an episode of Succession.
The shortage of aircraft mechanics presents a significant challenge to aviation in the United States and across the globe. While travel and tourism staged a post-pandemic recovery, the air transport business has been slower to bounce back in part because there are not enough qualified pilots to operate the number of flights that passengers demand. While the pilot shortage is more visible in headlines and even at airport gates, the lack of certificated mechanics threatens to be a tougher puzzle to solve because of difficulties in attracting enough young employees to counter the exit of retirees.
While most industry studies focus on commercial and airline operations, general aviation communities are feeling squeezed, with shops unable to hire enough workers to handle the demand for repairs, annual inspections, and other maintenance. Pilots, meanwhile, are waiting longer than usual—some say longer than ever—for appointments with their A&Ps. Many say signs of improvement are scarce.
“The outlook is fairly bleak,” said Jim Richards, owner of Aerodyme Corp., an FAA repair station in Burlington, Vermont. Located at a Class C airport, Aerodyme is surrounded by other aviation businesses including electric aircraft and electric vertical takeoff and landing developer Beta Technologies, all competing for technicians. “It has always been tight here, but now nobody has people. A lot of shop owners are giving up or turning work away to keep overflow under control.”
With his staff of four, Richards has specialized in maintenance, repair, and modification of Rockwell Commander 114s and 112s for 20 years. The Commander single is rare, more of a niche airplane, so for the first 10 years or so the small crew could handle the volume of work required. As the aircraft aged and needed more attention, they gradually fell behind.
Today the wait at Aerodyme for a Commander type inspection, which is more intensive than a typical annual inspection,” is about two years, Richards said.
“The niche has outgrown us,” he said.
The outlook is not all gloom. Numerous smaller training programs are chipping away at the deficit. The University of Maine at Augusta spent six years developing and certifying its aviation maintenance technician workforce development program, which begins training its first class of 25 on September 2.
The school plans to graduate 75 students from the five-semester program, giving them the opportunity to test immediately for their A&P certificate. They also can work toward associate and bachelor’s degrees.
“Aviation is a $2.1 billion industry in Maine, but we have known for a long time that we did not have enough aviation technicians,” said Daniel Leclair, an assistant professor of aviation and uncrewed aircraft systems who helped spearhead development of the new program.
Leclair said maintenance shop owners had told him for years that good mechanics were growing increasingly difficult to find. In 2018 his organizing group conducted a market study to help determine whether a training program made sense. The answer was clear.
“We knew we needed to get the next generation into the system,” he said, noting that young people often gravitate to this type of work once exposed to it. “Gen Z is a very hands-on generation,” Leclair said.
