that leave students ill prepared for work in modern aviation. Tey urge the adoption of Part 147 reforms that would allow schools flexibility in how they deliver the curriculum required by the ACS while fully preparing students to meet industry needs. Industry advocates, led by the Aviation Technician Education Council
(ATEC), a group that represents US AMT schools, have been working with the FAA for more than a decade to modernize Part 147. Unfortunately, the drawn-out process has led to FAA-proposed rules that further limit flexibility. In response, the industry has employed a different strategy for change: to force reform through congressional mandate. In December 2019, the Promoting Aviation Regulations for Technical
Training (PARTT) 147 Act was introduced in Congress (S. 3043 / H.R. 5427). Te industry-supported, bipartisan, bicameral bill, if passed, would direct the FAA to use community-drafted, performance-based regu- lations to define the A&P curriculum and to defer to the Department of Education in areas concerning the quality of education. Te FAA would maintain oversight of an AMT program’s facilities, equipment, and instructor qualifications. Te FAA would still control the ACS, which in turn drive AMT education curriculum, providing the agency with the means to evaluate the performance of individual students, as well as the performance of the AMT school, through analysis of student passage rates. Te overall result of the law would be the modernization of how
aviation technical schools teach, which includes the flexibility to ade- quately support the aviation industry’s technical workforce needs.
Along Comes COVID In the spring of 2020, as the PARTT 147 Act was gaining momentum in the US House and Senate, COVID struck. Overnight, AMT schools across the country closed. Administrators and faculty began assessing how to respond to the virus. Educators of all types across the country have demonstrated the pitfalls of pivoting to an online learning platform; this was exceptionally difficult for AMT schools, given the FAA approvals required to deliver any of the mandated 1,900 class-seat hours virtually. By the end of March, the FAA announced a “short-circuit” relief
program that allowed AMT schools greater flexibility to use electronic and online training and assignment delivery during the pandemic. Many schools took advantage of this offer. In May, ATEC surveyed its member schools about the impact of
COVID on their operations. Te group asked the same questions again in September to gauge the level of change across the aviation mainte- nance training industry. In May, two schools announced they’d suspended operations. Tis number increased to five in September. Conversely, the number of schools moving to some level of online instruction steadily increased as the pandemic dragged on. “In the United States, we have about 180 certificated programs, with
a little under half of them responding to the survey,” says ATEC Executive Director Crystal Maguire. “All of these schools were traditionally hands-on, with only four having received permission for any online content prior to COVID. By this summer, about 60% of our schools
had some content online. “Interestingly, the majority of the schools would like to maintain the
level of virtual instruction beyond the pandemic time line,” says Maguire. “Tis is a piece of the flexibility we seek.” Unfortunately for some, the flexibility wasn’t enough in the face of
the current Part 147 regulations. ATEC estimates that 20% of the country’s AMT schools have suspended their programs, either tem- porarily or permanently, since March.
Requirements Form Barriers North Idaho College began the long process of AMT certification in 2013, receiving its airframe program certification in 2015. “We planned to eventually have a full airframe and power plant
program,” says North Idaho College Aerospace Director Patrick O’Halloran. “We’d received a federal grant to add aerospace to the college as a part of solving manufacturing needs and started with the
AMT Education in Flux
Growth in AMT Schools Approved for Online Learning in 2020
100 120
20 40 60 80
4 0 Pre-COVID Post-COVID 108
Of AMT schools have 20%
suspended operations since March
Source: ATEC surveys, 2020 2020 Q4 ROTOR 43
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
