How Many Aircraft A& P Mechanics Do We Need?
In this article I would like to open the discussion of the possibility that the recent airplane accidents and mishaps may be a biproduct of the fact that there just aren’t enough Trained Certified A& P mechanics.
These are the people that are certified to work on aircraft. The question is, do we have currently enough of them? And are we planning for the future needs to produce these highly qualified individuals to do the work required on airplanes?
In recent months we have seen an increase in Airplane mishaps. I wrote this article because I believe that the cause just might be the lack of qualified A & P mechanics. They are known as Airframe & Power Plant Mechanics.
It has been my experience that the companies that I worked for did not see the value in sending their employees to get training. They say it doesn’t help their ROI or Return On Investment.
I think they really should take a longer term view of what the return on having well trained mechanics, and how much they actually contribute to the products being produced.
There are approximately 204,000 airplanes in the United States today. If you need at least 4 mechanics per larger aircraft, and as some aircraft are smaller, so they may get by with fewer, let us say two mechanics for the smaller aircraft. The actual distribution is determined by the aircraft maintenance depots, and those numbers I think need to be tracked.
So what are the numbers?
So just to maintain the aircraft already in service it should take approximately 824,000 or eight hundred twenty four thousand mechanics to properly maintain the aircraft in service today.
The current data says there are approximately 306,000 aircraft mechanics world wide. With 204 thousand of those in the U.S. and these numbers do not include those retiring in the near future.
It’s not only the manufactures of these airplanes that need to address this issue but also General Aviation needs to as well, in case you don’t know, General Aviation just are the smaller type of airplanes.
Should the Manufactures be Limited as to how many planes relative to the amount of available mechanics there are?
If manufacturers have the ability to produce as many aircraft as they possibly can, without regards as to weather there are enough mechanics to properly maintain those airplanes then we have a problem.
So this may tell the story as to why we are having many problems with the airplanes flying today, and how it may get worst if nothing is done to fix this.
The outcomes for 100% successful flights is not just predicated on having qualified pilots for these airplanes, what maybe even more important is on the availability of fully trained qualified Aircraft Mechanics.
Although there may be some inaccuracy in my numbers, the thesis still stands that we need to be training aircraft mechanics as soon as possible.
Thanks for reading
Joseph Sanchez
References:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183513/number-of-aircraft-in-the-united-states-since-1990/
https://www.zippia.com/airframe-and-powerplant-mechanic-jobs/demographics/
