Michelle Michaelson (pictured left, right) and Maddie Glassett (pictured center, right) at the 2024 Aerospace Maintenance Competition.
At this year’s Aerospace Maintenance Competition, a community college in Fort Worth, Texas beat 35 other student teams to win first place in the school category. Tarrant County College’s team also took first place in five events, including beating all 89 other teams in the competition to win the Southwest Airlines and Boeing thrust reverse control fault troubleshooting and repair event.
Two of the team’s student competitors are women who are taking unique career paths within aviation. Michelle Michaelson has transitioned from working as a pediatric intensive care nurse to airframe and powerplant (A&P) school, while Maddie Glassett is bolstering her existing aviation credentials (she is a pilot, certified flight instructor and has a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering) with aviation maintenance training.
In Michaelson’s case, stress from her nursing career and a lifelong interest in working with her hands eventually drove her toward a career change. “Nursing is highs and lows. It’s super rewarding, but it can be really hard on your soul. After COVID, I just needed to pursue something else,” she says. “Even when I was younger, I was taking things apart and putting them back together. My father would get a little cross with me because I’d take my bike apart and things like that. Turboprops are just a fascinating marriage of different concepts and technology. Combine that with my interest in fixing up old cars, particularly full-sized Jeeps, and being the handy woman around the house, it was almost inevitable that I would be drawn into this field.”
When Michaelson applied to Tarrant County College (TCC), its A&P school had a two-year waitlist, so she worked full time during this period to save money and prepare for her training. She began school in spring 2023 with a 17-hr. course load, working two 12-hr. shifts every weekend to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, Glassett was first introduced to the MRO industry through an internship at Southwest Airlines’ maintenance engineering department during her aerospace engineering studies. “That was my first exposure to maintenance and I just kind of fell in love with it,” she says. Encouraged by friends and family in the industry—including her father, an A&P technician—and a desire to one day own and maintain her own aircraft, Glassett decided to enroll in A&P school.
“My biggest challenge was transferring from a university setting to a trade school setting,” says Glassett, noting that there was a learning curve going from lecture halls focused on theoretical learning to a hands-on environment. “It ended up being a great thing because it strengthened the skills I learned in theory, and I got to practice hands-on application of that. My whole mission is holistic airplane knowledge as much as possible, from the engineering, flying and maintenance aspects.”
JOURNEY TO THE AMC
Glassett and Michaelson were chosen for TCC’s Aerospace Maintenance Competition (AMC) team in December 2023. The team was sponsored for the first time by Southwest Airlines, which invited the students to train with its own AMC teams at its Dallas TechOps facility. Michaelson says she averaged around 12 hours a week training alongside the Southwest teams.
“They did not hold us to student standards. We were expected to meet the high standards of the professional Southwest Airlines mechanics,” says Michaelson. “Everyone sacrificed for about two months to make it work. The Southwest mechanics adjusted their work and family balances during this time to make themselves available to us.”
Glassett notes that the close relationship helped both the students and professionals challenge each other to a higher standard. “The practices grew from a necessary task to one of my favorite parts of the week,” she says. “The Southwest team took us under their wing and just treated us like one of their own. I have like 11 mechanic friends at Southwest that I know I can reach out to for anything now.”
According to Glassett, practicing for the FedEx safety wiring event was a highlight during this process. “A lot of the schools don’t finish and it’s a two-person event, so it’s just you and your partner talking through it. Everything changes from practice, so it involves really good communication skills to change who’s doing what,” she says. Although she expected to be nervous for the event—her first in the competition—Glassett says the confidence she and her teammate gained from practice helped them excel.
Despite plenty of practice keeping a level head during stressful experiences through her nursing career, Michaelson says adrenaline kicked in during the FedEx Express cargo floor lock event, which is infamously difficult for many teams to finish. She ended up finishing the event fifth overall, right behind professional mechanics from Southwest and FedEx. Michaelson and her teammate, Eric Lee, also took first place in the Gore D-nose leading edge sealing event.
The AMC is often referred to as the Olympics of aviation maintenance, and Michaelson says the analogy is apt. “If you’re a diver you’ll spend years practicing for a few seconds, and it was kind of like that—months and months of practice for a few minutes in the limelight,” she says.
Glassett notes that TCC and Southwest’s teams continued their teamwork during the competition. “We would go back and tell them everything we messed up on so that they wouldn’t mess up and hopefully get a better score,” she says. “The camaraderie between all of us was unmatched. I think that was when I was smiling the hardest—just watching them succeed in the individual events and then watching them win overall.”
While Glassett and Michaelson both felt confident that TCC’s team was performing well, its first-place performance was still a surprise to both competitors. “We knew we were up against formidable schools—four-year universities with impressive names that have been in the competition and done well over and over again,” says Michaelson. “We knew we’d do well, but I don’t know that we thought we’d win it all like that.”
CAREER PLANS
Both Glassett and Michaelson will be finishing up their A&P certifications at the end of this year. Michaelson will also be testing for her aircraft electronics technician certification this summer, and she is looking into potentially pursuing an electrical engineering degree that could be applied to aviation.
Although Michaelson is still considering career options, she notes that a classmate made an important point recently about not wanting to be stagnant in their job. “I’m the same way. One thing I’m looking for in a company is an avenue to progress,” she says.
Glassett had originally planned to pursue a pilot career right out of school, but she says her AMC experience has caused her to reevaluate her options. “I already took two years out of my journey to come here [TCC] and a lot of people looked at me like I was crazy. They were like, ‘Why are you going to give up flying two years of seniority at an airline just to go get your A&P and probably not use it?’” she says. Glassett is now considering getting a maintenance job for a while before moving to the next stage of her career, ultimately hoping to find a job where she can fly and maintain the same aircraft.
When asked about ways in which the MRO industry can do a better job engaging with young people and women, both students shared some interesting perspectives.
“I wish I had known what opportunities in aviation were available when I was younger,” says Michaelson. “I think high school programs would be an ideal way to enlighten younger individuals to aviation prospects. Even doing a yearly presentation showcasing what aviation has to offer and fielding questions would spark tons of interest.” She adds that offering shadowing programs to high school and college students would also help women in aviation connect with others.
Glassett emphasizes that the industry should encourage people to share their love of aviation outside work. “I think people underestimate the power that could have. That’s why I’m here—because my parents showed it to me,” she says. However, she cautions that the industry should still prioritize seeking people with a genuine passion for aviation.
“I think there’s a balance between trying to just recruit everyone we possibly can and potentially filling the industry with a lot of people who aren’t super passionate about it,” she says. “What makes aviation so unique is everybody is here because they want to be here and had to work hard to get here.”
You can read other interesting AMT career pathway stories from Aviation Week Network's 2024 Aviation Maintenance Technician Day feature here.
