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US Congress Fully Funds Aviation Maintenance Workforce Grant Program

: Dec 19, 2019 - : 3:38 am

The FY 2020 appropriations deal unveiled by U.S. House and Senate negotiators on Dec. 16 includes full funding for a new aviation technician workforce development program.

Section 625 of last year’s FAA reauthorization bill authorized US $5 million annually for five years to support the education and recruitment of aviation maintenance technical workers and the development of the industry’s workforce. It also created a parallel program, authorized at the same level, to support pilot education.

Congress created the programs to address the workforce crisis confronting the U.S. aviation sector. An analysis by Boeing suggests that airlines in North America will need 189,000 new technicians and 206,000 new pilots over the next two decades. The consulting firm Oliver Wyman has forecast that demand for aviation maintenance technicians will outstrip supply by 2022. More than two-thirds of U.S. companies responding to ARSA’s 2019 member survey reported vacant technician positions.

The original sponsors of the bills that created the technician grants were Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Reps. Sam Graves (D-Mo.), Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) and MarkWayne Mullen (R-Okla.).

“We’re proud of what we’ve accomplish with our coalition partners and pleased that Congress has acted in a truly bipartisan way to tackle a problem with significant consequences for both the aerospace community and the broader U.S. economy,” ARSA Executive Vice President Christian A. Klein said. “The new program will encourage local partnerships and innovative thinking about how recruit and train the maintenance professionals the aviation industry needs to thrive in 21st century.”

The technician program supports a wide variety of aviation maintenance workforce development recruitment and training activities. In order to be eligible, a grant application must be supported by an aviation business or union, a school and a governmental entity.

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