William Brown, chief aviation officer at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance.
William Brown was recently appointed chief aviation officer at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance (AIM), where he will focus on bridging the gap between education and industry. He spoke with Aviation Week Network about the lessons he will bring to AIM from his more than 20 years in the industry, as well as his perspectives on some of the aftermarket’s biggest training challenges today.
This is the first time I’ve seen a Part 147 school create a C-suite position devoted specifically to being a liaison between industry and academia. Could you tell me a bit about this role and what your focus will be?
What's great about my role is I’m a conduit between the industry and Part 147 schools. With 15 schools, 13 campuses and the magnitude of students we have, we have a profound impact on wherever [our students are] hired, whether it's general aviation, business, MRO or major airlines. I think if we can continue to up our game with some of the changes that are being made within the FAA for the Part 121 requirements and already some of the changes for training [referring to revamped Part 147 regulations], we could prepare our students and get tremendous insight from our advisory board into some of the most simple things you can do with the curriculum and with the inside of our hangar space to make our students far more capable to enter the workforce past certification. Because I think certification is the goal, right? But it's more than that today. If you look at how everything has changed in aerospace over the last 10 years, look what's going on, not only with the airlines, but also at Boeing, Airbus and a lot of the other major manufacturers. A lot of that knowledge really needs to get ingrained in the students during this initial training for their A&Ps [airframe and powerplant licenses], so that when they come out, they understand what's expected of them, and they've already been practicing what that behavior looks like, either through personal safety, product safety or product knowledge.
I’ve recently heard a lot of companies complaining about how new graduates are lacking in certain skill areas, such as safety wiring, avionics and soft skills. How will you work in your role to address this disconnect?
I think AIM is perfectly positioned with all the advice we're getting from the advisory board, taking that and bringing that into a couple key things that I'm going to help develop at all of our schools. One will be the common behaviors inside of our “factory,” as I'm calling it, so we’ll call it hangar code of conduct. When you walk into Boeing or you walk into an airline, there are expectations of how to behave. You don’t walk under a wing where there are control surfaces moving; you know when there’s power on an airplane; all those things. We're going to bring that into our code of conduct handbook that we're writing and then teach all of our instructors why that's important and what the industry expectations are, and then take that to our students.
At the very end of the [students’] certification, we could do a quick capstone on, “If you're going to go interview, here are some things you probably ought to remember to do. Here's a board; I want you to put these fittings on. I want you to safety wire these three things. I want you to do an ohm test on this. I want you to measure this plug.” And then our students will be the best prepared to go in there and pass [their A&P examinations] with flying colors. In addition, what to wear, what questions to ask for, what things not to ask for—all of that really sets our students apart from the rest, because they'll be more prepared.
On the other side, schools are always talking about how they need more industry support, and I’ve heard from aviation maintenance students that they feel companies need to be more involved in providing hands-on training experiences to Part 147 schools. What do you think MRO industry companies need to be doing better on their end?
We're going to be partnering with the major airlines. They've even offered our instructors to take some of the gen fams [general familiarization courses] and other training they have. GE Aerospace has offered to train our instructors as well, so we're leveraging that. Bell Helicopter at MRO Americas came up to me and said, “We’d love to have a more advanced training facility at your Dallas school, so that they're not just learning Korean War rotorcraft there. We'll give them something far more sophisticated, so when they come out, it'll be much easier to hire them.” So that's part of my job. I know all those people, having spent 20 years in the airlines, another three years in MROs and 17 years in manufacturing. Southwest Airlines has offered us first chance at their retirement of their [Boeing] 737.
Everybody has a problem with test equipment. You’ve got actuators on there, and some are in really good shape and some aren't. Well, why can't we replace those actuators with removed unserviceable actuators from a 737? And not only have a consistent training vehicle for our students, but also modern equipment. We're going to be looking at all of our campuses, especially in Atlanta, at Delta Air Lines. What can Delta do for us? In Dallas, what can American Airlines do for us? And so on. Right now, there's a lot of traction and a lot of participation to help us do that.
You’ve had a long career spanning the airline, MRO and OEM segments of the aftermarket. When it comes to what the industry needs from schools and vice versa, what would you say has been your biggest lesson learned from your time in the industry?
The average student has changed. The students we had 20 years ago are very different. I'm encouraged because of the pay scales that are coming up, the number of people now that are coming out and saying, “That might be a really good career for me,” where they [previously] thought maybe it was going to be IT or engineering. I'm really encouraged by that, but we have to up our game.
On some of the basics that have changed—timing a magneto and replacing a hydraulic pump, that's very basic and simple to do, but when you're putting a fastener in and the smallest defect is going to be written up, we're not doing a good job teaching our students how to keep that bare metal clean. So, as an example, I was in Indianapolis yesterday, and one of the hammers we use to put fasteners in is a very old hammer. I asked, “Why are we using this hammer?” [They said,] “Well, it’s the one we have.” I said, “What does it cost? $8? Go get 10 and as soon as they start to wear let's go get a tool that cleans up so we can show our students how to prepare their tools to not put defects on parts.” That's the training that's missing today.
The other one is the product safety factor of when to use a hammer and when not to use a hammer. When it says, “Drill a hole plus or minus five,” what do you drill it to? Everybody will give you a different answer. We’ve got to teach them what the right answer is when they're faced with those [questions] so they don't cause a defect or harm to the product that they're building which, over the long term, could create an incident or accident. So human factors and other things like that, I think are what's missing in the curriculum today.
We’ve recently started hearing about the Part 147 instructor shortage and how badly schools need more experienced people to transition from industry to academia. What drew you from industry to academia, and how do you think schools can recruit more people to these types of roles?
I started my career at American Airlines in 1986. I was a jet engine mechanic. I was really good at it, so I ended up going into training and training jet engine overhaul for American Airlines for five years, so I was a maintenance instructor. That is my career love. That was the best job I ever had. I traveled the world, teaching people how to do stuff. It was super cool. Throughout my career, that passion has stayed. I really worked hard to get this role. I want to be a part of making a difference in aviation, because I'm an A&P. My son's an A&P. I'm a pilot, and I also have an MBA. But when people ask me what I do, I tell them I'm a mechanic, because it's what I'm most proud of. I want to bring that experience into the room. I want our students to be the most prepared for the world that is out there. And I'm just thankful that we have such a large network where we can also get people [from companies] like Southwest Airlines and GE Aerospace coming into our facilities [who are] willing to share their wisdom, and they're also willing to spend time with me at that school, going, “Hey, Bill, have you thought about doing this? Have you thought about doing that?” All of that, I think, is going to help AIM lead the way in not only the curriculum but also the overall quality of the student that's coming into the industry to be more prepared working with very sensitive aircraft.
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