Aircraft Maintenance Technology - 37

STAYING CURRENT
IAs must remain current and are reauthorized several ways. That
is described in 14 CFR Part 65.93(a) 1 through 5. In summary, the
applicant must have yearly activity performing or supervising 1)
a specified number of annual inspections, or 2) major repairs or
alterations, or 3) progressive inspections, or 4) has completed an
FAA-accepted refresher course within a 12-month prior to renewal,
or 5) IA renewal can be accomplished by an oral examination, on
knowledge of regulations and standards, by an FAA Inspector.
Item 4, FAA-accepted refresher training is the topic of this
article. That training, most commonly, is completed by attending
an eight-hour class. However, it can be completed with training
from the FAA Safety Team or other commercial websites. Many
organizations, like the Aircraft Electronics Association, and AMT
Magazine, offer online IA renewal training.

SELECTING THE COURSE CONTENT AND SPEAKERS:
A GOVERNMENT INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIP
The full requirement for content of an IA renewal class is specified
in FAA Order 8900.1 Volume 3 Chapter 56. FAA defines the content
such that it can be matched to local/regional maintenance-related
safety topics. It should relate to aircraft maintenance, inspection,
repairs, and alterations. Selected nontechnical subjects, like maintenance human factors or personnel development can also be in
an FAA-accepted class. In most cases, the classes are designed
by FAA and local/regional maintenance providers.
For the remainder of this article I will discuss a seminar that
was designed by the FAA Boise FSDO and a Boise-based international aviation company named The Mission Aviation Fellowship
(MAF). Started by a visionary female missionary pilot, in 1946,
MAF operates nearly 95 aircraft worldwide as part of its Christian
mission outreach. In most cases, the flight crews are experienced
pilots that also hold A&P and IA credentials. About 30 percent of
the 150 IA renewal delegates were from MAF. MAF sponsored the
meeting at its U.S. headquarters, which includes an impressive
maintenance base and training facility for advanced flight and
maintenance crews. In my tour of MAF, I saw a range of aircraft
from Cessna 206s to a new Quest Kodiak. The training facility
had a modern flight simulator. Maintenance training had an excellent PT6 run-up stand. Again, this equipment was for advanced
maintenance and flight training.
Per the FAA guidelines, the training had an excellent mix of
technical and nontechnical topics, each topic is described below.
The topics were selected to meet identified challenges of the targeted IA audience. The planning team discussed topics that had
the highest potential to impact maintenance-related safety and
compliance. They felt that the challenges focused on topics related
to airworthiness, especially use of proper manufacturer documentation and FARs (three presentations); human performance (three
presentations); and engine performance (two presentations, recip
and turboprop). Speaker affiliation was: Industry (three), School
(one), and FAA (three).

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Aircraft Maintenance Technology

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