Podcast: Barriers To Entry—What’s Holding Back MRO’s Hiring Pipeline?

Lindsay Bjerregaard and Sean Broderick discuss takeaways from the Aviation Technician Education Council conference, including the increase in high school career pathways, FAA testing hurdles and the maintenance instructor shortage.

For more background on the FAA testing challenges discussed during this podcast, check out this episode from last summer: Electrification, Hydrogen And A&P Testing Barriers.

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AI-Generated Transcript

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Welcome to the MRO Podcast. I'm Lindsay Bjerregaard, Aviation Week's managing editor for MRO. And joining me today is Sean Broderick, Aviation Week's senior air transport and safety editor. Welcome, Sean.

Sean Broderick: Good to be here. Good to be back from Portland. Although Portland was nice.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Sean and I were both there last week for the annual conference of the Aviation Technician Education Council or ATEC. And that conference is always a great barometer for some of the MRO industry's biggest training and recruitment trends and challenges. It's worth noting that it's not just Part 147 schools that we hear from there. There's also airlines, MROs, OEMs, regulators, and other aviation industry stakeholders. So today we'll just be discussing some of our takeaways from the conference. So Sean, why don't we start with you? What do you think stood out this year?

Sean Broderick: Yeah, I think as you said, the great thing about this conference is it gives you a snapshot of the front end of the workforce pipeline that we talk about so much. You of course are very close to this because you write about it, I think more often than any of the rest of us, but you often hear it talked about on earnings calls and at high level C-suite panels at places like MRO Americas. But this is the one meeting where you really get to hear from the people on the front lines, not just, as you said, the Part 147 schools, but the next steps, the hiring managers, the training managers at airlines and in general aviation; we had a manufacturer there. Bombardier was there. Really interesting to hear firsthand. And this year, again, much like last year in Norfolk, we got a firsthand view of some of the challenges.

I was looking for a more positive word because there are some positives too. But as always, some of the challenges that the 147s have with aligning their requirements, the regulatory requirements with the needs of the MROs and airlines. Five years ago, there used to be a more predictable path, I think, for new mechanics going from getting a freshly minted A&P — maybe they go to a regional airline for two, three, four years, and they learn on the job how to be a mechanic at a Part 121 carrier. Now, it's not just the airlines that hire these mechanics, but for the sake of industry growth and sort of the sake of this discussion, we'll limit it sort of to that Part 145 and the MROs that do Part 141 and the MROs that do Part 121 work. And we're still seeing sort of a gap between some basic needed skills. Safety wiring is a big one that often comes up and it came up again this year between what is retained — it's taught in the schools, but what is retained and then what is sort of brought to that first job.

But another thing that has become more of a hot button or more of a top of mind issue in the past few years are the more soft skills. It seems as though students or newly minted A&Ps coming out lack some of the softer skills that you didn't always pick up learning how to turn a wrench or how to troubleshoot a technical problem. It's more about reading and comprehending a maintenance manual or a task card, knowing when you need to stop and ask for help as opposed to sort of just doing the best you can because while that kind of effort is always appreciated, doing the best you can doesn't necessarily get you to following the regulations. So we heard a lot of interesting stories from airlines and again, Bombardier as well, about some of the challenges with some of these newly minted students. Now, we also heard some solutions as to what some of these operations are doing.

We heard Horizon along with Alaska Air Group was not sort of, they were the host out there. So we got to hear a lot from them and they have some innovative things going on. Archie Vega, who basically runs the training and recruitment for Horizon and dabbles in the rest of the group as well. One of the things that they've started doing in some of their high school outreach or some of their candidate outreach is having mock interviews. And the mock interviews go much farther than understanding the content or showing up on time. They even get down to the dress and how you dress and how you act in those interviews. And that's something you think that would be learned in a more, I don't know, a general scholastic environment or a general job prep environment. But what we're finding is that more and more of these things need to be taught by a trade school.

It goes beyond the technical issues and it gets into some of these things that maybe a generation ago would've been taught in a different place. Nobody's casting any blame, nobody's painting generations with broad brushes. They're simply recognizing that their learning environments are a little different and they're having to adjust how they approach some of their internships and high school outreach to fill in some of those gaps. So those are some of the big takeaways for me.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: I was going to say, speaking to the high school programs, one of the things that we saw a lot of talk about this year was those high school programs. The silver lining of some of those, you mentioned the complaints we often hear about the lack of soft skills with new hires. And it does sound like one of the side benefits of a company doing a program where they go into high schools and have interns from there is that they can really help prepare those young professionals earlier to be confident, to show up on time, present themselves professionally, be team players and that sort of thing. And in addition to Horizon, we also saw AAR talk a little bit about what they're doing with high school programs. Oklahoma City is kind of their big model for that. It was interesting to hear them talk a little bit about navigating different rules and regulations when you're dealing with students who are under 18, who don't have FAA certifications to work on aircraft, but it sounds like they are finding ways to give these students opportunities to do hands-on work in back shops and shadowing technicians and that sort of thing.

And it's worth noting too, some of these programs are being run through Choose Aerospace, which was Aviation Week's Grand Laureate winner in the MRO category this year. So I just wanted to give a shout out to that. On the more negative side, I guess I'll be the bad cop on this. I did want to give a shout out to a session that Sean, you moderated where you guys went over the findings from the pipeline report, which is a study that's done by both ATEC and Oliver Wyman Vector that sort of gauges the progress the industry in the U.S. is making towards closing the workforce shortage and the gap there. So broad strokes, there is some progress happening. The amount of certified mechanics in the U.S. was up more than 20% over the past decade, but they still don't expect that to be enough to close the gap.

I know that a lot of the initiatives that companies and schools have undertaken during this time period to publicize MRO careers, to boost recruitment to the schools is helping. The report did say that enrollment in the schools was up more than 9% in 2024 from the prior year, but I thought it was interesting that the student load factor or basically the ratio of available school program seats to enrolled students was only at 64%, but at the same time, more than half of the respondents to the survey they used for that study reported having a wait list for enrollment. It could be students deciding that MRO isn't for them, students getting poached by other industries. But one that came up with that and that I'm going to talk about a little bit is the fear of doing the FAA testing that's required for students to get their airframe and powerplant licenses.

Another part of that could be attributable to shortages of instructors and designated mechanic examiners. I'll get to that in a second as well. But basically, the bottom line is that the report expects the U.S. MRO industry to still be more than 4,000 certified mechanics short of its needs by 2035. So there is still work to be done. So I could probably talk for two hours about the testing issues, but there was a lot of talk about this, so I did want to mention it. We did a lot of coverage last year about things that came up at the conference about testing, and I don't want to waste time, so we can put links in the description to some of that coverage. But what it boiled down to is that there were basically two significant barriers standing in the way of students being able to do their required FAA testing to get their A&P licenses.

One was that the Part 147 school community was having a lot of issues with PSI, which is the company that the FAA contracted to handle all their written testing for the general exams. The other one was the shortage of designated mechanic examiners, DMEs. Those are the people that proctor the oral and practical exams that they do once they pass those written exams. But since the coverage last year, on a positive note, it does seem like PSI and the FAA have reopened their communication and their collaboration with ATEC and the member schools. They're trying to address some of the outstanding issues. One of the big ones that was talked about last week was that the schools want data on student testing outcomes so they can figure out what students are struggling the most with and address that. PSI said they have this data; they could easily provide it, but it sounds like there's some holdups at the FAA.

One thing that they said was that the current contract that they have with PSI doesn't have a provision for PSI providing that kind of data. So it sounds like there would be a lot of bureaucratic red tape to adjust the contract. They talked about how they don't want it to result in higher testing fees for the schools. The other thing that they mentioned was that the FAA is concerned about making sure that that kind of data is secure and allocating the staff required to do that. It seemed like between PSI and the FAA, there was sort of a lot of discussion about concerns about security and cybersecurity with testing, and that's something we're going to be following up on. So stay tuned for that. The one other thing, one of the disconnects seemed to revolve around the opening of new testing centers and updating the written tests so that they align with revisions to the Airman Certification Standards.

So PSI said that they're actively working on updating test questions to align with the ACS revisions. They talked a bit about how they're using technology like AI to generate new and varied test questions. So essentially every student who tests would get a different set of test questions, but the tests would still equally cover the same subject matter as another tester. But it seems like there's still some contention between the schools and the FAA and PSI on the need for new testing centers. So the FAA and PSI continually cite data that FAA testing applicants utilize only 19% of PSI's total available seating capacity, but the schools are saying that this still isn't enough for two reasons. One is that all of the students kind of want to test around the same time of year around graduation. So there's a huge demand all at once versus that testing need being spread out throughout the year.

Secondly, there are still areas that have these Part 147 aviation maintenance schools, but they don't have testing centers with capacity nearby. So students are still needing to travel far distances to do their testing, even if there might technically be a testing center within 25 to 50 miles, just because there's high demand, it's hard to find those slots. And Sean, I don't know if there was anything, any update on the DME situation. I know we will be following up on that, but if there was anything you wanted to add.

Sean Broderick: So one of the things that's happening now and it's sort of evolving is the FAA has revamped its Organization Designation and Authorization or ODA program. This is all coming out of the 737 MAX crisis, but it affects examiners because designated mechanic examiners are now eligible to be part of an ODA. And so basically in simple terms, if a Part 147 school applies for and is granted an ODA for DMEs, they can become their own oral testing providing source, which is a huge thing. And for some schools, especially ones that output a lot of students, it may very well be a worthwhile path to go down. I mean, it's not turnkey, it's not simple. They're required to follow these requirements, which are still evolving. There's guidance out, but the FAA has to provide, as they always do, sort of more guidance on how to follow the guidance, but it's evolving and schools are trying to wrap their heads around whether it makes sense for them to go down this path.

I mean, they would have to meet the same standards that a Boeing has to meet for its ODAs that do both certification and the production approvals as well. It's not the silver bullet to solve all the problems for DME access because again, some of that's a geographic issue. There just aren't DMEs in an area where there are schools. And if that school's not big enough to justify doing the administrative work and sort of the hassle of having an ODA, then it's not necessarily going to help them. Hawaii, I think Hawaii has no DMEs. Is that correct? Still, they're working on getting one. Hawaii has no DME.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: I think at least as of last year, there were no DMEs. So if students in Hawaii wanted to go take their oral and practical testing, they had to fly to the mainland. Yeah.

Sean Broderick: Which is insane. And so the FAA says it's very close to getting a DME approved for Hawaii. And that was one thing that came out of the regulatory session. Challenges like that, it's that and the data subject that we've talked about. Getting data back to these schools is a fundamental way for them to understand where they can improve and help the throughput and help close some of that gap that the pipeline report identifies. And that a sole source contract with a government agency doesn't have sort of clearly delineated requirements or needs or targets for getting that data — it's mind-blowing to me. Even realizing we're talking about the FAA here, I mean, they struggle with data collection, analysis and making use of that data. But in this case, it sounds like they can't even get the data, which is just wild to me. But there should be a lot of low-hanging fruit that frustrates the 147 crowd, and they're doing the best they can with an improving set of rules.

The 147 rule was updated after decades of effort, and now for those that want to take advantage of an ODA, they have that. So overall, I think the mood was encouraging, but still some very frustrating points that when you look at it from a reasonable perspective, you're like, "How can this even be an issue in 2026?" I mean, getting data from a set of tests that students are taking that's basically, it's all the same. It's not like they're answering essay questions here on the written anyway. So anyway, it's very, very interesting.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, we're going to be following up on it, so stay tuned for that. The last thing I just wanted to quickly touch on was the instructor shortage. This came up quite a bit. It's in the pipeline report, but basically it's hard to convince an aviation maintenance technician who's making good money at an airline, at an MRO, to just decide to switch to a job at a technical school making way less money. It would be a big pay cut. So it seems like a lot of times these different Part 147 schools — their efforts are focused on recruiting technicians who are at or close to retirement age, who are looking to take a step back, but still contribute to the industry. However, there was kind of a wild story. Sean, you were there for this — one of the evening receptions — but one school told us that they had had a career fair and one of the MROs that they invited to the career fair to come talk to their students used that as an opportunity to poach a bunch of their instructors to come work for that MRO's internal training organization.

So it sounds like it is kind of the Wild West out there. There's not a lot of instructors. And as we see more and more of these Part 147 programs pop up across the country, finding people to staff those is going to be harder and harder. So it's worth noting that ATEC did launch an initiative a couple of years ago called ATEC Academy, and that is focused on helping maintenance professionals and retirees transition into teaching roles. They actually held one of their training sessions for that last week in Portland. So it's being worked on, but right now it sounds like that is a big bottleneck in the whole training environment as well.

Sean Broderick: Right. Well, I mean, finding enough talented people seems to be the common theme. And even when you get capable people that are coming out, sort of the candidates, then it's making sure they have — not only making sure they have the technical requirements, but now it's making sure they can learn to work well as teammates with their shopfloor mates and don't spend the whole time looking down at their shoes, which — it's crazy, but I suppose it's the evolution of how things are. And the good part is they're really good technically. The youngest generations are really good at using anything technical you throw at them and they grasp the technical stuff easily. I guess the challenge is that in getting that technical acumen growing up as a teenager, maybe you lose some of the social interaction that makes it a little bit easier to be a teammate in person, so to speak.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Yeah. And actually, I mean, one last quick anecdote about that too — Sean, in your panel that you moderated, the head of one of the schools mentioned that they had created an AI tool called Jet that students could use to ask questions instead of having to go to a counselor's office in person. So they're trying to adapt, I think, to accommodate this preference for technology instead.

Sean Broderick: As one of the panelists said, the goal is to meet them halfway. You can't change the whole operation because you still have two and three generations of workers that are on the floor that sort of understand and do things differently. So you can't change everything for the new generation, but also you can't expect them to undo 20, 21 years of doing things the way they've done things and using chatbots or using technology to get stuff as opposed to making a phone call. I'm guilty — I hate picking up the phone now. I'm a technology guy, so I get it. But I thought the panelists had talked about trying to meet them halfway being an ideal goal. I think it's a fairly good general bar to set these days.

Lindsay Bjerregaard: Well, I know we could go on for probably another hour, but that is unfortunately all the time we have for today. So thank you, Sean, for your insights. Thank you to Cory Hitt for producing this episode. Don't miss the next episode by subscribing to the MRO Podcast. And one last request — please consider leaving us a star rating or review. Thank you.