Listen in as James Pozzi and Lindsay Bjerregaard discuss the MRO industry's emerging challenge of a less experienced workforce as an increasing number of people reach retirement age.
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Join us at AeroEngines Europe 2025 in Hamburg this September. Hear from leading experts about the challenges and opportunities in MRO supply chain optimization and the paths to net-zero emissions and next-gen engine technologies. Featured items include a shop tour and hosted reception on the historic Cap San Diego. You can register at aeroengineseurope.aviationweek.com. MRO Podcast listeners save 20% with promotion code “MROpodcast.” That's all one word. See you in Hamburg.
James Pozzi:
Welcome to the MRO Podcast. I'm James Pozzi, MRO editor for the EMEA Region. And on today's episode, we are talking talent. So from time to time, we like to look ahead at upcoming Inside MRO cover stories. And joining me today is Lindsay Bjerregaard, who is managing editor MRO at Aviation Week. Lindsay has just written the May cover story for Inside MRO, which you'll be able to read later this week on AviationWeek.com. And, Lindsay, thank you for joining me today and look forward to speaking to you about, I guess some of the main issues at the moment with the MRO workforce.
Lindsay Bjerregaard:
Thanks, James.
James Pozzi:
Brilliant. So, let's get started, then. Let's focus on your article. Of course, you've written about what is working for the workforce right now. What were some of the main takeaways that you got from that, of course, speaking to people in the industry and writing extensively about this topic?
Lindsay Bjerregaard:
Sure. So, I think anybody who's been following the general MRO workforce situation knows that there's been a shortage, and it's supposed to be worse coming soon. So just for some context, some of the different industry workforce reports that talk about how many technicians are going to be needed and that sort of thing, Boeing's Pilot and Technician Outlook predicts that the world's going to need more than 700,000 new technicians over the next decade. Here in North America, they'll need about 17% of those. And so in the U.S., the Aviation Technician Education Council, or ATEC, expects that the U.S. is going to be 20% short of its technician needs by 2028. It's going to shrink somewhat over the next decade, but it's still going to be short. And so to prepare for this, a lot of companies have been ramping up all of their hiring needs and trying to prepare for these retirements and that sort of thing. So sort of the main themes that came up in this article were one, retention issues, and two, this juniority issue that we've been hearing a lot about lately.
James Pozzi:
Yeah, sure. Juniority is an interesting one, which we'll get onto shortly. It seems to me from what I've seen recently, and you'll know better of course, covering this topic more extensively over the years. Positively in the past year or so that the workforce, the hiring issue as such, bringing people into companies, has eased somewhat and improved. Is that something you are seeing as well?
Lindsay Bjerregaard:
Yes. So hiring has definitely ramped up recently. A lot of companies have been trying to get into schools to get people interested in aviation younger. So ATEC’s latest Pipeline Report did show that in 2023 -- that’s the last time they had data for this -- aviation maintenance school graduate certifications increased by 31% over the previous year. Those schools also saw a 5% increase in enrollment and a 10% increase in graduates. So more people are starting to enter the industry now, and companies are definitely continuing to increase their hiring. It seems like every company that I talk to, they're building new hangars, and they're trying to hire more people to work in those hangars. So definitely that workforce hiring and all of that activity is ramping up.
James Pozzi:
Yeah, absolutely. It brings me on to juniority -- a term I wasn't too familiar with until quite recently actually, but it has definitely popped up so far this year at various conferences across the world. So it seems to be a global concern as such. So what exactly, just to for the listeners, really, who maybe aren't too familiar with the term, what exactly is the juniority issue and what is causing, I guess, this experience imbalance in the workforce?
Lindsay Bjerregaard:
Yeah, so I had also not heard the term “juniority” until Boeing put out its 2022 Pilot and Technician Outlook. They predicted in that report that juniority across the workforce will be a major challenge over the next two decades. And what they mean by this is this scenario that's happened where there was an older technician workforce demographic, and they were already getting close to retirement age. And during the pandemic, a lot of them took early retirements. And if they didn't, they're now nearing it. So for instance, the average age of the technician workforce in the U.S. was already over a decade older than the median average for a U.S. worker, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And then ATEC’s latest Pipeline Report showed that 40% of aviation maintenance technicians in the U.S. are over 60, and over the next decade, one in three will reach retirement age.
So the vast majority of the technician workforce up until this point is getting ready to leave or has already left. So companies have been ramping up their hiring, but that means that a larger proportion of their workforce now has limited experience. ATEC had a recent conference in March, and at that conference a major U.S. airline shared some data showing that around 47% of its technicians are retirement ready, and around 35% of its technicians now have less than five years’ experience at the airline. And this is increasingly common. So I actually moderated a juniority panel at MRO Americas in April, and we did an audience poll at the beginning asking how much of your MRO workforce has five years of experience or less? And the majority of attendees said that more than 40% of their workforce has five years of experience or less. And it's interesting, this isn't new necessarily. At MRO Americas a couple years ago, there was one example Atlas Air gave where they said a maintenance vendor was supplying them with two junior-level technicians, who combined had their airframe and powerplant licenses for 60 days total. So that means there's more workforce coming in, which is a great thing, but they have significantly less experience: five years or less compared to technicians who've been working in the industry for their whole careers. So that's obviously leading to some issues.
James Pozzi:
Yeah. And what are those main impacts, would you say of juniority that we're seeing right now? Is it just the kind of imbalance that we talked about, or what would you say are the most noticeable issues related to this right now with companies?
Lindsay Bjerregaard:
It's sort of a mix of a culture clash and skills shortage is what I'm hearing a lot about. So before I get into that, I wanted to just give some context. So prior to the workforce hiring situation that we're in now, there was sort of a common progression where new graduates from aviation maintenance schools would get hired by MROs, repair stations or smaller regional airlines. And they would work there for a few years and gain some experience before they would move on to major airlines. But now those airlines are basically plucking those graduates right out of school. And as a result, I am certainly hearing a lot more complaints from them about ways in which they see these new graduates falling short. So one is the technical skill shortages. I've recently heard complaints about things like avionics, which is not necessarily new, avionics is complicated, but basic skills like safety wiring and that sort of thing.
So at that ATEC conference, one airline’s director of learning and development told me that that airline is basically ruling out around 20-25% of their new technician applicants because they're failing on basic mechanical aptitude tests. The converse of that, there was a school on that panel and they had mentioned that a lot of those types of skills are taught early on when a student goes to learn about aviation maintenance. So they kind of just forget about it unless they're constantly being refreshed on that. But the other big complaint I'm hearing a lot about, and this is subjective, but it's soft skills. So people complaining about Gen Z, they're constantly on their phone, they don't know how to talk professionally, send professional emails, that sort of thing. I've heard a lot of complaints about that. I've also heard from some companies that say this is not necessarily a failure on young people. It's not necessarily a failure on the schools. Part of it is because airlines weren't necessarily previously used to having those fresh college graduates on their workforce. There was a panelist on my juniority panel from Pratt & Whitney who had pointed out, if you thought back to your first job and your first manager, would they have said that your soft skills were great in your first job out of college? So that's something to keep in mind as well.
James Pozzi:
Yeah, very interesting. And some of these challenges certainly present a real conundrum to the industry, of course, which we said earlier has done a lot of great work in terms of recruiting people into the industry. But now dealing with this going forward, how do you see companies, I guess, coping with this situation? Will it be in going back to maybe looking at culture of the company, methods related to training, maybe investments in technologies? I don’t know, how's the industry going to solve this quite big conundrum?
Lindsay Bjerregaard:
You gave some bullet points of exactly what I am seeing companies doing. In addition to sort of revamping training programs, offering more internships and apprenticeship programs, I've seen more instances now where there are sort of formal mentorship programs happening at companies. So examples where they're pairing these new less-experienced workers with more experienced ones. There's a company called Launch Technical Workforce Solutions that's based here in the Chicago area. They do a lot of workforce-related things for companies in the industry. And they have a program where not only are they pairing younger, inexperienced workers with more experienced ones, but they have specific milestones that they're working with those younger workers to hit. And as they reach those milestones and they kind of test successfully in those skills, their pay goes up. So that helps with retention as well. We're also seeing more technology being used with training, right?
Trying to make that more effective, make it more quick. So that's things like augmented and virtual reality. AAR has some interesting examples they're using. So one I hadn't heard of before, they're literally using QR codes that technicians can scan with their devices that will pull up video tutorials for them. And I've heard complaints about, ‘Oh, Gen Z doesn't want to check the manual, they just want to watch a YouTube video.’ Well, if that's how the change in learning is, that could be an effective method as well. And then we're also seeing more with airlines and MROs trying to work with these aviation maintenance schools to kind of help them influence and develop curriculum. I've heard a lot about how they want to try to get in there and work on soft skills. So we'll see if that happens more and more, but I expect to see more of that.
But I did want to share one example that I heard yesterday. I was talking to Phil Bathurst who's the CEO of Aspire MRO, and he said they have a lot of younger workforce coming in. And he said the trap that a lot of these more experienced managers in MRO are falling into is thinking that because they think they know what they're doing their way, it's their way or the highway. They know what works and they think they know what these younger generations prioritize, but the younger generations prioritize different stuff. So it's an unrelated example, but he had talked about they wanted to buy some nice hoodies for their workers, and his thought was, ‘Oh, they're going to want the really high-quality, thick fabric, the most expensive hoodies that we can get with the logo of the company on it.’ But his HR director had said to him, ‘Well, why don't we go and poll the guys on the shop floor and see what they actually want?’ And he said, I was completely wrong. They don't want the thick, most expensive one. They want lighter fabric hoodies. They want a different fit. So I think people who are a little bit older need to just recognize that attitudes change. People's priorities and how they learn and how they work, they change. And if you don't change along with them, there's going to be a lot of clashes. So I think that that's something that companies are going to need to keep in mind as well.
James Pozzi:
Yeah. Excellent. Lindsay, thank you so much for giving us these really valuable insights today on the juniority issue, which is sure to dominate some of our, or be a fixture, I'd say, as a topic at our conferences for the immediate future, no doubt. And as I said earlier, it seems very much a global thing. So it'll be interesting how the regional comparisons between, I don’t know, North America, which you've shared many examples from today, Europe, of course, and Asia-Pacific and wherever else. So yeah, thank you, Lindsay. And just a reminder as well, that Lindsay's feature article on this topic will be on AviationWeek.com later this week, the Inside MRO cover story. So thank you, Lindsay. And thank you for listening today. Don't miss the next episode by subscribing to the MRO Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. And one last request. If you are listening in Apple Podcasts and want to support this podcast, please leave us a star rating or write a review, thank you.
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Join us at AeroEngines Europe 2025 in Hamburg this September. Hear from leading experts about the challenges and opportunities in MRO supply chain optimization and the paths to net-zero emissions and next-gen engine technologies. Featured items include a shop tour and hosted reception on the historic Cap San Diego. You can register at aeroengineseurope.aviationweek.com. MRO Podcast listeners save 20% with promotion code “MROpodcast.” That's all one word. See you in Hamburg.
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