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A peek inside the precise and highly-trained world of airline mechanics By Francis Savanhkham
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hat image springs to mind when you think of an airline mechanic? A burly figure in oil-stained overalls and permanently dirty fingernails? Lots of clanging tools and loose bolts? The reality, as mechanic Soutsakhone Lounsengchanh discovered early in his career, couldn’t be further from the truth. “Being an airline mechanic isn’t a job where you get your hands dirty,” he says. “It follows a strict schedule and involves a lot of modern technology and documentation. So it’s not a lowly job that anyone can do.”
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It’s a standard Wednesday morning at Wattay Airport in Vientiane, but the atmosphere in the hangar out the back of the building is far removed from the low-level-stress hum of the arrivals and departures lounges, with all their exhausted queues of people and clattering suitcase wheels.
“This is just the base maintenance, and it’s all very serious and done on a strict schedule.” It’s a long way from where he found himself more than five years ago in his first career choice. He was a qualified English teacher working part-time in Vientiane, having finished a degree in English pedagogy.
Here, amid soaring steel beams and scaffolding, aircraft stand in orderly “I could see that Being an airline mechanic rows, while teams of the level of my isn’t a job where you get technicians in neat work would never your hands dirty blue overalls are quietly change, that I would absorbed in the gaping never be able to innards of whichever plane is up next. enhance my professional experience,” The hinges swing back easily, and the Soutsakhone says. mass of coiled steel, knobs, lids and wires inside look shiny and clean. “So I decided to apply for something that would let me increase my “Every aircraft is checked and knowledge and experience – to be an maintained each day, according to aviation technician.” the documentation provided by the engineering division,” he says. All qualified technicians must first
