From the Classroom to the Hangar

By Savanna Tanner

Abigail (Abi) Creager is an Aircraft Maintenance Technician (AMT) at Piedmont Airlines.

“My favorite part of the job is knowing that when the plane goes up to the gate, it will have a nice safety approval. It feels good to be able to fix something and tell people, especially people I know who fly on these planes, that this plane is a good plane; this plane is going to get you to your destination safely.”

Abi learned about career opportunities in the aviation field when she was in high school. “I’d been in an engineering class, and I did not like sitting behind a desk, but I did like working on cars,” Abi said. One day someone mentioned working on airplanes and Abi immediately explored the potential of working in aircraft maintenance. “It just seemed so cool to work on something that big and powerful and something that necessary,” Abi said.

In the midst of her high school graduation, Abi toured Piedmont Airlines’ maintenance hangar in her hometown of Salisbury, Maryland. She learned about their AMT Tuition Payment Program, a program designed to help provide financial assistance to students pursuing their A&P license to become Aircraft Maintenance Technicians and work on commercial aircraft. Within five months of graduation, Abi was enrolled and attending the Aviation Institute of Maintenance (AIM) in Norfolk, VA in their accelerated program “The tuition program really helped,” Abi said. “I’m debt-free and it feels great. And, I was guaranteed a job after graduation, so I have a career set up for life.”

Abi joined Piedmont in October 2022. “Here you get to do so much – you get to work on a lot of different things, and I really like that I get to know the whole entire aircraft. I usually like working with the engines and I’ve tried getting into sheet metal and some composites, too.”

In every shift, there’s something new to fix. “Every day, there is an inspection to do, and the inspection always turns up different faults with the aircraft that we have to then go back and fix,” Abi explained. “For every different aircraft there’s going to be different things going wrong and parts that need to be traded out.”

The Piedmont hangar is fueled by teamwork. “A lot of the people here are really cool, and it just makes working so much fun,” Abi said. “The music will be playing and we’re all singing along to different songs, and it sounds awful, but we’re all just happy, turning wrenches. We spend a lot of time together at work, so we try to make it as enjoyable as possible.”

Becoming an AMT provides unique job opportunities for those interested in aviation maintenance. “It’s just a different beast compared to vehicles,” Abi said. “I know a lot of people love working on cars and tinkering with the little stuff, but you can get all those aspects and more working on an airplane. There’s just so much more riding on what you’re working on and what you’re signing off at the end of the day.”