ENGAGE FUTURE MAINTENANCE PROFESSIONALS

Organized in 2020, Choose Aerospace is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) partnership of aerospace stakeholders, joined together to address one of the biggest threats to continued industry growth: the availability of a diverse, qualified technical workforce. ​The purpose of the campaign is to unite companies, associations, labor unions and educational institutions, to spur interest in aerospace careers, and identify and implement solutions to the aerospace workforce shortage.

The CHallenge

Aviation maintenance professionals are in high demand as evidenced by numerous industry reports, including:

• Boeing’s 2022-2041 Pilot Technician Outlook projects that the North American market will need 134,000 new technicians to support fleet operators and providers of maintenance, repair, and overhaul services. Forecasted demand for commercial aviation technicians in North America has eclipsed pre-pandemic levels by nearly 10%.
• The Aviation Technician Eduction Council (ATEC) Pipeline Report suggests that, at the current rate of production, the industry will struggle to replace the current exiting workforce, and fall well short of increasing the technical workforce population in order to meet new demand.
• The Aeronautical Repair Station Association's Global Fleet and MRO Market Forecast asserts that the current labor force is potentially too small to support aviation’s anticipated growth and that technician shortage concerns are expected to reappear in 2022 and beyond as industry market rebounds to pre-COVID levels.
• Oliver Wyman predicts that that the gap between the supply and demand for mechanics will develop in the U.S. by 2022 and reach a peak of 9 percent by 2027.
  

And yet FAA-certificated aviation maintenance technician schools (AMTS)--producer of nearly three quarters of new mechanics--struggle to fill their classrooms. ATEC also reports that nationally, nearly two out of every five available AMTS seats remain open and that certificated programs, particularly community colleges with little to no marketing resources, would greatly benefit from increased career awareness in their communities.

The SOLUTION

For schools that have high school partnership programs, those relationships are seen as the most effective way to recruit students. For that reason, a primary objective for Choose Aerospace is to make aviation technical programs more accessible to secondary education and to develop and clearly communicate multiple career paths to success within the industry.

In 2020, Choose Aerospace embarked on a journey to develop and release aviation maintenance curriculum. Our goal is to create a program that fully supports pathway progression for 10,000 enrolled students by 2027. Visit our site to learn more about the Curriculum and how to Support our efforts.