145 Repair Station

I have worked in a 145 Heavy Maintenance facility for a once major airline back in the 80’s. I am currently running a 145 Medical Helicopter repair station and while they are both 145 repair stations, they are also very different. One of the top items is finding qualified maintenance personnel. I am very lucky that there is an aviation school on the other side of the parking lot at the Allegheny County Airport. We do a lot of hiring from the school. Right now, we have to hire graduating mechanics with an A&P who have a little previous experience. There is an apprentice program at our location and when these mechanics are hired, they do not have the knowledge but are willing to learn. Because they are working in the repair station, an A&P is not necessary. But this is how we are getting individuals without experience or even no aircraft experience the required training to become qualified mechanics. This is a very important part of our operation in which we are building our pipeline to train and keep aircraft mechanics. 

Every airline or aircraft operation needs to work on this as well. With the shortage of good mechanics this will help everyone. Once they have the experience, we have the FAA work with them to get their A&P.

It used to be that sheet metal mechanics were very hard to find but I have filled that void by taking mechanics who want to learn the trade and put them into our sheet metal shop for a year at a time. This gives them the knowledge to help their crew if a sheet metal mechanic is needed and the shop is maxed out.

Now it seems avionics mechanics are becoming hard to find. But one of our apprentices is now in the avionics shop. This is a very tedious job and if you find good ones you must hang onto them as if they’re gold.

"It Works Well Simply Because of The Communication. It is The Key to any Good Organization."

We deal with the OEM for a lot of our parts, but we also manufacture quite a few parts in another one of our locations. With the timeline that you have, making sure that the aircraft checks are completed and released back into service on time makes for lots of losing sleep. This is our biggest delay item for not getting the aircraft back into service.

For me another important item is to have a good planner and floor supervisor. Without these two individuals the operation would come to a halt. The planner sets up all our work and tracks each aircraft to make sure the chargeable man-hours are correct plus working with the heavy maintenance corporate planners to make sure we can handle the work that have been assigned to us. The floor supervisor makes sure that things are going well and brings any issues to the planner or myself to see what we can do to rectify the issue. We work together to communicate between ourselves in order to come up with solutions to whatever issues come up. It works well simply because of the communication. It is the key to any good organization and to help your group ensure they are meeting their goals and profits. After all, that is the purpose of the 145, making money for your company.