Aircraft Maintenance Technology - 64

ARSA INSIGHT

Maintenance Professionals
Share Career Stories
The workforce
shortage will be
much worse by
the beginning
of 2022 than
it was at the
beginning
of 2020.

By Christian Klein

Christian A. Klein is
the managing member
of Obadal, Filler,
MacLeod & Klein,
P.L.C. and is executive
vice president of the
Aeronautical Repair
Station Association.

OCTOBER 2020

How did you wind up in your current position? What do you love about your
job? What IS your job? What advice would you give to a high school student
interested in pursuing a career in aviation maintenance?
Those are just some of the questions the Aeronautical
Repair Station Association (ARSA) is asking industry
leaders as part of its aviation maintenance career
pathways video series. The videos are part of ARSA's
ongoing effort to recruit new talent to the aviation
maintenance industry to ensure our members have
the technical personnel they will need in the coming
months and years.
You may be asking: Why now? Hasn't the industry
just laid off tens of thousands of workers because of
an ongoing pandemic? If we need people so badly, why
are people losing their jobs?
It is no secret that business conditions for the industry are terrible. While ARSA has not yet released the
results of its special mid-year member survey on the
impact of the pandemic on repair stations, the preliminary results paint a grim picture. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics is reporting a 25% year-over-year drop in aviation employment and it is likely our survey results will
find similar job losses in the maintenance sector. Close
to 90% of ARSA survey respondents say their revenues
have declined since last year. And, while there is no
consensus about when things will get back to normal,
around 40% of respondents do not think it will be before
the end of next year.
Things are grim now, but they will not be forever.
Air travel will eventually reach pre-pandemic levels and continue to grow. When that happens, we
are going to find ourselves confronting the same
workforce challenges we were in as recently as early
March. Recall that just a few months ago a significant
technician shortage was costing repair stations more
than a billion dollars per year in foregone economic
activity. When you combine the personnel losses
repair stations have experienced since the start of
the pandemic with the looming retirements of so
many aging technicians, it's likely that the workforce
shortage will be much worse by the beginning of 2022
than it was at the beginning of 2020.
So, while ARSA is focusing on the present crisis, we
are also planning for the future. That means intensifying - not abandoning - our workforce development

initiatives. The video project described above is just
one part of that effort. For years, ARSA has pursued a
multi-pronged strategy: identifying and sharing best
practices, obtaining federal resources to support technician recruitment and training, removing regulatory
roadblocks, raising the industry's visibility and encouraging students to consider maintenance careers.
We think ARSA does a pretty good job telling the
industry's story, but we recognize that the most effective spokesperson we're going to have is someone
who is currently working in the industry and passionate about what he or she does. It is with that in
mind that during ARSA's 2020 Annual Conference
in Washington, D.C. in early March we recorded a
series of interviews with maintenance professionals
from around the country who are at various stages of
their careers. Our conversations focused on a range
of topics, including how the interview subject wound
up in our industry in the first place, what their company does, what they do for their company, what they
love about their job and aviation and how someone
just starting out can position themselves for success.
You can see the first product of those discussions
- with a focus on ARSA's value, admittedly - at
arsa.org/video.
The next step will be to develop the raw footage into
a series of short, less than 90 second, videos that ARSA
and its members can post online to support our collective outreach to the next generation of talent. Some
videos will focus on a single individual's career path,
while others will provide multiple perspectives on a
common theme - e.g., all the various paths by which
people end up in the maintenance sector, career advice.
While the project continues, and it will continue,
we encourage all maintenance professionals to stay
focused on the future and think creatively about how
to deal with the technician shortage we all know is
coming. If you would like to get more involved in ARSA's
workforce efforts and/or if you have a great story to
tell about your own career you'd like to share, do not
hesitate to reach out via arsa.org/contact.

AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY

http://www.arsa.org/video http://www.arsa.org/contact

Aircraft Maintenance Technology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aircraft Maintenance Technology