One of the solutions to widespread flight delays and cancellations might be sitting in a hangar at the Cedar City Airport.
That’s where around 50 students are joining Southern Utah University’s aircraft maintenance technician program this fall.
There are a lot of different aircraft they can get their hands on here. Propeller planes. Helicopters. St. George-based SkyWest Airlines even donated a full-size commercial plane for students to work on.
After five semesters of training, graduates will have an associate’s degree and their pick of jobs.
“I have not met a student thus far that hasn't gotten a job when they've graduated,” program director Jared Britt said. “Your return on investment to become an aircraft mechanic is probably one of the best in the United States right now because the pay is crazy.”
Historically, he said, mechanics had to work their way up the ladder for two or three years before getting a higher paying job with a major airline or an emergency helicopter service. Now, those jobs are hiring graduates right out of school with salaries north of $60,000.
The reason? Aircraft mechanics have become increasingly hard to find, even though they’re a vital part of the industry.
“Everybody talks about the pilot shortage,” Britt said. “But if you think about it, two pilots fly that aircraft. It takes a team of mechanics working around the clock to maintain that aircraft.”
When American customers stopped flying at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines scrambled to cut payrolls.
More than 17,000 workers left Delta Airlines — roughly 20% of its workforce — through buyouts and early retirement in the first half of 2020. At American Airlines, there were 4,500 early retirements.
As travelers returned, the industry has had trouble catching up. Nearly 22% of flights have been delayed so far this year, according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That’s the highest percentage since 2014.
The number of cancellations also increased as flight demand rebounded from the pandemic, which a recent congressional report blamed on factors airlines control, such as staff shortages.
Estimates now show the industry is short between 12,000 and 18,000 mechanics this year.
And another wave of retirements is about to hit. The Associated Press reports that more than one-third of airline mechanics are between 55 and 64 years of age, and less than 10% are younger than 30.
Utah is positioned to take advantage. Delta Airlines is building a new pilot training center in Salt Lake City. The U.S. Department of Commerce is putting $1.4 million into developing aircraft mechanics in Carbon County. Even so, programs like SUU’s can expand only so fast to meet the need.
Two big challenges standing in the way of the program’s growth, Britt said, are limited space and a lack of qualified instructors.
“The industry is paying people so much money right now, it's really hard to get them to come into education and teach for us,” Britt said.
The program’s current space, which it shares with the SUU flight school, can hold around 200 students — a number they plan to hit next fall. So SUU is working to get government grants that can help build a hangar just for mechanics.
The long-term goal is to have 600 students by 2027. To do that, it has to find a lot more people like Nathan Davies of Ogden.
He has loved airplanes since the first time his parents took him to the airport as a kid, but he knew he couldn’t become a pilot because of his colorblindness. So when he realized he could still get close to airplanes by fixing them, that seemed like the next best thing.
“If I can't fly, I guess I'll work on them,” Davies said. “I've loved it. It's been a great change for me.”
Since graduating in the spring, he’s been working part-time as a mechanic at SUU while he finishes up the testing he needs to get certified for full-time work.
While he might get a job with a major airline someday, he prefers smaller aircraft for now because it lets him learn his way around all parts of the plane.
“As soon as we started touching the real aircraft,” Davies said, “I was like, ‘That's definitely what I’d like to do.’”
Even with such a lucrative and rewarding pitch, the program still finds it hard to shake some cultural biases against this type of career path. One of the biggest challenges with getting an 18-year-old interested, Britt said, are parental hesitations about blue-collar work.
Sure, mechanics are still using their hands, he said. But at the end of the day, they get to watch an aircraft fly away and return safely because of the work they did.
“That's very, very rewarding, and you get paid a lot for it,” Britt said. “These blue-collar jobs now are paying more than what you’re paid in an office with an engineering degree initially out of school.”
Demand from the airline industry isn’t going away, either.
SUU recently formed a partnership with SkyWest Airlines in which the company will provide a scholarship to a student in the mechanic program if that student agrees to work at SkyWest for three years after graduation. Britt said the school is working to make similar partnerships with helicopter companies and business jet companies to offer students more options.
The university also began offering a new avionics track for students to focus on the advanced computer systems that now run most large aircraft this fall.
“That's what the industry needs,” Britt said. “They need aircraft technicians, they need engine power plant technicians, and they need avionics technicians. So we're trying to diversify the school.”
