Building the next generation of aviation technicians will require more than recruiting workers. It will require rethinking how we educate, certify, and transition talent into the industry.
America’s aerospace industry does not have a shortage of opportunities. It has a shortage of people prepared and credentialed to fill those opportunities.
For years, aviation has discussed the growing shortage of maintenance technicians. Retirements are accelerating, fleets continue to grow, and aircraft are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Meanwhile, airlines, MRO organizations, manufacturers, defense contractors, and general aviation operators are competing for many of the same technically skilled workers.
The numbers demonstrate the scale of the challenge.
The Aviation Technician Education Council’s annual workforce research shows that over 9,000 new mechanic certificates were issued in 2024, while enrollment at FAA-certificated Aviation Maintenance Technician Schools increased approximately 9 percent. Those are positive developments, yet the industry continues to face a near-term shortage of approximately 10 percent of the certificated mechanics needed by commercial aviation.
Even more concerning is what exists beneath those numbers.
Nearly one-third of the available capacity within aviation maintenance schools remains unused. Schools report difficulty generating awareness of aviation maintenance careers, recruiting qualified instructors, funding laboratories and equipment, and expanding facilities.
The problem is not simply that we need more technicians. We need a better system for producing them.
An Aerospace Pipeline That Starts Too Late
One of the industry’s greatest challenges is awareness.
For decades, aerospace has done an excellent job of inspiring young people to become pilots and engineers. We have been considerably less successful at explaining the careers that exist behind aircraft maintenance technicians, avionics specialists, manufacturing technicians, inspectors, and the many other occupations necessary to keep the aerospace system operating.
We cannot begin that conversation when students are already leaving high school.
Aerospace needs a much stronger presence in high schools, and secondary education, career and technical education programs, community colleges, and workforce development initiatives. Students need opportunities to experience technical aviation before they are asked to choose a career.
There are encouraging signs. Programs such as Choose Aerospace are designed to introduce aviation maintenance at the high school level. Choose demonstrates that exposure changes career decisions much earlier than college. Those efforts need to become part of a much larger national strategy connecting secondary education, technical colleges, employers, and certification.
Recruitment, however, represents only one side of the equation. We are also overlooking one of the most experienced aerospace workforces in the country.
We Are Losing Military Aviation Talent
Every year, highly trained aviation maintainers transition out of the U.S. military.
These men and women may have spent years maintaining some of the most sophisticated aircraft and aviation systems in the world. They understand maintenance discipline, technical documentation, inspections, troubleshooting, safety culture, and operating in environments where mistakes have serious consequences.
Civil and Defense aerospace desperately needs those skills.
Yet the Aviation Technician Education Council estimates that fewer than 10 percent of veterans with aviation maintenance experience transition into the civil aviation industry.
That should concern everyone involved in aerospace workforce development.
The problem is not the quality of the military training. The problem is translating military experience into civilian credentials and employment.
The current pathways provided for those maintainers are unclear. Military experience may count toward the practical experience required for an Airframe and Powerplant certificate, and the Joint Service Aviation Maintenance Technician Certification Council provides another pathway for qualifying service members. However, navigating that system can still be unnecessarily difficult.
Depending on their military specialty and experience, transitioning maintainers may need to document their work, demonstrate eligibility, navigate FAA requirements, and ultimately complete the same knowledge, oral, and practical testing required for civilian certification. The FAA itself notes military service alone does not automatically authorize someone to test; eligibility depends upon the individual’s specialty and documented practical experience.
The result is a credentialing gap.
Someone can leave military service with years of highly specialized aviation maintenance experience and still face a complicated path toward translating that experience into the civilian credential employers recognize.
That system needs an overhaul.
Certification Should Recognize Competency
This is not an argument for lowering standards.
Aviation maintenance certification exists for a reason. An FAA mechanic certificate carries significant privileges and responsibilities, and civilian aviation requires competencies that may not perfectly align with every military specialty.
The solution is not to eliminate those requirements.
The solution is to create a more efficient way to identify what a military maintainer already knows, determine what competencies are missing, provide targeted gap training, and move that individual toward certification.
ATEC has advocated for exactly this type of reform, including better use of the JSAMTCC pathway and development of a military competency test and associated Airman Certification Standards. The organization has also called for broader reform of Part 65 to create clearer and more flexible pathways to mechanic certification.
That approach makes sense.
We should not ask an experienced military maintainer to start over. We should identify the gap between military competency and civilian certification and train specifically to that gap.
Doing so could create one of the most immediate opportunities available to strengthen America’s aerospace workforce.
Why Washington Matters
These are precisely the conversations that must take place between industry, educators, regulators, and policymakers.
This September, aviation maintenance educators and industry leaders will return to Washington, D.C., for the Aviation Technician Education Council’s annual Fly-In. Events like the ATEC Fly-In are important because workforce shortages cannot be solved entirely at the school or employer level.
Many of the barriers are systemic.
Federal policy affects workforce grants, FAA certification, military transition programs, testing capacity, secondary education pathways, and the resources available to aviation technical schools.
Organizations such as ATEC give educators and employers a collective voice in those discussions. They also bring something Washington desperately needs when discussing workforce policy: data from the people actually educating and employing the workforce.
The industry’s workforce challenges are too important to address through isolated programs.
They require coordination.
The Technician Is Changing
At the same time that we attempt to expand the workforce, we recognize that the work itself is changing.
Modern aviation maintenance increasingly incorporates digital documentation, electronic troubleshooting, advanced avionics, sophisticated diagnostic equipment, predictive maintenance, and data-driven decision-making.
That does not diminish the importance of hands-on technical skills. If anything, those skills become more important.
But the technician entering aerospace today will need a broader combination of mechanical ability, electronics, digital literacy, troubleshooting, and systems thinking than previous generations.
Our education system must evolve accordingly.
Schools cannot simply teach what aviation maintenance looked like twenty years ago. Military transition programs cannot focus solely on converting occupational codes into civilian job titles. Employers cannot expect education alone to produce technicians perfectly trained for every aircraft or system they operate.
Each part of the pipeline must connect to the next.
A National Aerospace Workforce Strategy
There is no single solution to America’s aerospace workforce shortage.
Primary and Secondary schools must introduce students to aerospace careers earlier. Aviation maintenance schools need the instructors, equipment, and facilities necessary to expand. Employers must participate more directly in education and workforce development. Military maintainers need clearer pathways into civilian certification. Regulators must protect aviation safety while modernizing certification systems. And policymakers must recognize aerospace technical education as part of America’s national infrastructure.
Most importantly, these efforts cannot operate independently.
The United States already possesses extraordinary aerospace talent. Our challenge is creating a system capable of connecting those people with the opportunities waiting for them.
The future of aerospace will depend on new aircraft, new technologies, and new capabilities.
But none of them matter without the skilled workforce capable of keeping them flying.
