Oct. 10--The Greene County Career Center has joined a list of Federal Aviation Administration approved airframe maintenance schools that will allow it to train high students to fill a big need for mechanics in the aviation industry.
The career center's airframe maintenance program recently received FAA Part 147 certification, which will allow students in the program to earn airframe technician certification.
This the first time in nearly two decades that a school from the Miami Valley region has qualified for the certification and the first time in 32 years a career center in Ohio has won the designation, said Dave Deskins, superintendent of the Greene County Career Center.
Deskins said getting the FAA certification is a culmination of a market study the career center conducted before building the new school on Innovation Drive in Xenia, which found the Dayton-region was in need of aerospace jobs.
"There is a pretty giant need in the Dayton-region for airline mechanics," Deskins said.
The aviation maintenance program is taught by Jason Knisley and is housed at the Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport in Xenia. Deskins said the Greene County Career Center received $850,000 in state funds to build a new hangar at the airport that is being used for this program. The new hangar was finished in July and in August the program's first 17 students started classes. Those students will complete first phase of an Airframe and Powerplant certification.
After finishing their studies at the career center, students can go on to finish their Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic license (A&P) training at either Sinclair or Clark State, using a $3,000 Tech Prep scholarship. Deskins said the final leg of training is about a year long.
"The starting salary for airframe mechanics ranges from $60,000 to over $100,000 a year, so for a kid to be able to come out with two years of high school training and one year of additional college training and be able to have that kind of a future is really exciting," Deskins said.
Deskins said the Greene County Career Center has partnerships with companies in the region, like Airborne Maintenance in Wilmington. Airborne donated about $50,000 of equipment to the program and helped develop the curriculum.
"Some of our students, we're pretty confident, will be hired their senior year and be working hours at an airport. But we also know that even if students choose not to go after the powerplant component right away, Airborne is standing ready right away to hire a number of those students with just the airframe mechanic high school side of it," Deskins said.
Mark Snook, general manager of Airborne Maintenance & Engineering Services in Wilmington, said that Boeing released a study last year that calls for a shortage of almost 200,000 aircraft maintenance technicians in the U.S. by the year 2038.
"In order to meet that demand, the aviation industry as a whole will need to collectively create innovative solutions to generate awareness of aviation careers in young adults, who will be our next generation of technicians," Snook said. "To put it simply, the industry as a whole is hurting for aircraft technicians."
In 2016, Airborne launched their Structures Apprenticeship Program to assist in filling in the technician gap for high school graduates. For the first three months of the program, the student will be in a classroom setting, then move onto the mentorship portion where they will be assigned an experienced FAA certified technician as their mentor.
Airborne hires A&P certified technicians, but also has a wide range of available positions including avionics technicians, planners and director level positions, Snook said.
Someone with training in airframe maintenance or an A&P certification can work on structural damage to the outside and wings of an airplane or make repairs to the interior. This type of training also readies students to learn to wire airplanes or other aviation work.
"These kids are going to walk into really great careers, good paying positions," Deskins said.
"The families that live and work here, because of our proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, aerospace-type careers are extremely important to our families because many of them are working either in supportive programming at the base or are in the Air Force, so to be able to promote careers that support that locally is really exciting for us as a career center," Deskins said.
In Other News
___
(c)2020 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)
Visit the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) at www.daytondailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
"need" - Google News
October 12, 2020 at 12:29AM
https://ift.tt/3jSvKot
Greene County Career Center Filling Huge Need for Aviation Mechanics - AviationPros.com
"need" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3c23wne
https://ift.tt/2YsHiXz
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Greene County Career Center Filling Huge Need for Aviation Mechanics - AviationPros.com"
Post a Comment