ENGINES.qxp_Finance 23/11/2021 09:30 Page 1
ENGINES
What’s the Future of BizAv Engine Maintenance Training? As new technologies spread throughout the aviation industry, A&P technicians must familiarize with how they are used to operate and maintain aircraft and their engines. Chris Kjelgaard looks at the future of engine maintenance training…
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lmost nobody would claim that the global Covid-19 pandemic has provided a silver lining for humankind, or the world’s economic development. Yet, because the health crisis forcibly limited in-person interactions between people worldwide, its effects have helped hasten a near-revolution in aviation engine maintenance training within the same timeframe. Before the virus spread globally, engine manufacturers (OEMs) mainly provided maintenance training for their civil aviation customers’ airframe and powerplant (A&P) technicians by means of hands-on residential training courses at the OEMs’ training centers. In some cases, technicians would travel considerable distances to reach those training centers, spending weeks there learning about the intricacies of the engines on which they would be working, as well as the techniques by which they would maintain and overhaul the engines powering their employers’ aircraft. Today, however, the situation is different. All the major civil aviation engine manufacturers have embraced remote learning as a fundamental teaching tool as they strive to ensure that, while travel restrictions and gatherings of large groups of people continue to be restricted in many parts of the world, their customers’ 90 Vol 25 Issue 12 2021 AVBUYER MAGAZINE
technicians continue to receive the maintenance training they need. “GE Aviation has offered more remote learning opportunities since the pandemic,” says Shannon Korson, Senior Customer Service Manager. In pre-Covid times, “normally, aircraft and jet engine mechanics would travel to one of GE’s or CFM International’s training centers for hands-on learning. “Due to global travel and social distancing restrictions during the Covid-19 outbreak, more training is being delivered to where customers are – on their laptops and mobile phones.” Korson notes that initially GE Aviation is focusing its development of new maintenance practices, such as remote learning, primarily towards the customers for its large commercial aviation engines, such as the GE90 and GEnx lines, rather than to customers for its Bizav engines. One reason for this is that Business Aviation has not been affected by the pandemic to anywhere near the extent that commercial aviation has – in fact, the Covid19 crisis has stimulated some parts of the Bizav and General Aviation sectors, such as the market for used business aircraft. In contrast, many of the world’s airliner operators have had to park vast numbers of large commercial aircraft because of the near-complete ban www.AVBUYER.com
