20th century training to maintain 21st century airplanes

Air Safety Week, March 24, 2003

Aircraft mechanics do not get enough training on computers and composite materials. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) needs to bring its required curriculum into alignment with the times and trends, according to a new report of aircraft and powerplant (A&P) technician training. The March report by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, asserts that the curriculum "has not changed significantly in over 50 years."

As a result, the training places too much emphasis on outdated technology and not enough on the maintenance and repair of technologies assuming an ever more prominent place:

"[The] FAA requires the schools to provide instruction on the repair of aircraft made from dope and fabric, while guidance on repairing aircraft made of composites and having sophisticated computer systems is limited. There are about 4,000 dope and fabric aircraft, many of them crop dusters, compared to tens of thousands of modern aircraft that transport millions of passengers and [tons of] cargo in the United States."

The present curriculum is too focused on smaller, less complex aircraft, the GAO said. Past FAA efforts to modernize the curriculum were stymied by the industry. "[The] FAA proposed changes to the A&P curriculum and certification processes in 1994 and 1998, when it issued notices of proposed rulemaking," the GAO report noted. "But negative comments on specific items in the proposals, such as a requirement that mechanics have recurrent training, caused [the] FAA to withdraw the proposals."

The GAO recommended that the FAA review the curriculum once again, and de-emphasize or delete "courses that do not reflect widely used aircraft technology and materials on commonly flown major commercial aircraft." The full report may be read at www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-317.

[Copyright 2003 PBI Media, LLC. All rights reserved.]