MICHAEL PHELAN / LONDON & KAREN WALKER / WASHINGTON DC
While training standards for European engineers are being updated, US schools are wondering when the FAA will stop dithering over new guidelines
The European aircraft mechanic training sector is adapting itself to new regulatory requirements, but across the Atlantic the federal guidelines so desperately sought by the USA's big training schools are slow to materialise.
The contrast between the progress of the two major regulatory jurisdictions is highlighted as the Joint Aviation Authorities prepares for implementation of the JAR 66 training certification, while the Federal Aviation Administration once again delays the introduction of its FAR Part 145 update.
The JAR 66 legislation is revamping technical training and ensuring international commonality of the technical standards of aircraft mechanics. The JAA requires that by June 2011 all technicians who work on aircraft in the compliant states must be JAR 66 certificated. Although broadly similar to the standards in existence today, the JAR 66 certification requires some changes to training methods, and schools must be certificated under JAR 147 to offer it.
In France, Snecma Services is adapting its maintenance technician training methods due to the regulatory changes. The company's Saint-Quentin facility overhauls CFM International CFM56s as well as General Electric GE90 compressor modules, and it runs a customer training centre at nearby Montereau. The centre trains technical staff for CFMI's airline customers, and as such the majority of its students are already well trained in the basics of their trade.
The school offers maintenance courses for the CFM56-2/3/5/7 engine types, and the 10 instructors train about 1,500 mechanics each year. "Courses are tailored to each customer's requirements," says Franck Boque, training programme manager at Snecma Services' customer training school. "It takes about four to six weeks for a full set of courses for a CFM56 engine."
The school has adapted its programmes recently to comply with the forthcoming JAR 66 training requirements. The school is expecting JAR 147 certification this month, placing it among the first companies in Europe to offer JAR 66 certification to maintenance personnel.
Tighter regulations
With the new regulations, Montereau must test its airline students before they can qualify from the courses. "The pass level is 90% course attendance and between 80% and 90% test score. In the past it depended on attendance only," says Boque. The training school will have to undergo regular audits by French civil security authority GSAC to ensure it keeps its JAR 147 approval.
Other changes include the requirement that the engine and nacelle are considered together for maintenance purposes. "Before, it was only included in our training courses for the CFM56-2 and 5C, as it depended on workshare split," says Boque. Michel Brioude, general manager customer support for Snecma Services, sees the company's ability to offer JAR 66 certification as a business generator for the training school. "For example, Air France have already spoken to us about working together to certificate their staff," he says.
The USA is lagging behind its European counterpart in updating its equivalent regulations. Unlike training for flightcrew, which is specific and clear cut, FAA rules for training airline mechanics are surprisingly basic and generalised. The FAA training guidelines have not been updated for 50 years, leading to anomalies that clearly do not fit today's industry demands.
The FAA requires the 175 US schools that are certified to train prospective airframe and powerplant (A&P) mechanics to include repair instructions for dope and fabric aircraft in their basic curriculum, for example. Guidance for teaching repair of aircraft made of composites, however, is limited.
A recent US General Accounting Office (GAO) report makes clear that the FAA has made few substantive changes to the A&P mechanics curriculum in decades. "The required A&P curriculum at FAA-approved technician schools is outdated and primarily geared to smaller, less complex aircraft that do not transport significant numbers of passengers and, according to many in the aviation industry, is not relevant to most of the aircraft flown today," says the GAO.
The GAO is calling on the US Department of Transportation and the FAA to review minimum A&P curricula so that older technology courses are de-emphasised or replaced with courses that address current conditions. It also wants changes in an A&P school's curriculum to be reflected on the mechanic's certification examination, "thus ensuring that all candidates for the A&P certificate meet the same standard".
While that may imply new rings of bureaucracy, more modern training standards and some across-the-board standardisation would mostly be a welcome prospect. For many years repair stations, industry associations and airlines have been calling for clearer guidelines so that FAA compliance is better understood. Airlines say that it can take up to three years of on-the-job training under close supervision, after maintenance school, for a mechanic to become fully productive.
More up-to-date minimum training standards could reduce that timeline and widen the pool of "qualified" A&P mechanics. "A representative of one major commercial air carrier said that 75% of their newly hired A&P mechanics that graduated from aviation maintenance technician schools failed the air carrier's basic skills assessment test for mechanics," the GAO reports.
Keeping today's mechanics up-to-date with the latest aircraft systems is one of the major pushes in recurrent training.
At Snecma Services, Brioude sees "helping technicians adapt to the new tools they encounter in aircraft" as one of the current key directions for training schools. "An example is the MCDU [multifunction control display unit] on Airbus A340s and the CDU on Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft," he says.
Training devices
Snecma's training school has developed PC-based in-house CDU and MCDU training devices for CFM56-7Bs on 737s and -5Cs on A340s respectively. Boque says the tools are useful in helping technicians overcome any initial wariness of the complex avionics. "The technicians must fully understand how to interrogate and analyse the avionics to ensure effective engine repair and maintenance." The CDU/MCDU emulators fully replicate all the functions of the real system; sensor interface testing, hydraulic and electrical control loop testing and ensuring the engine control unit can display engine parameters on the electronic centralised aircraft monitor and generate exceedance warnings. "One customer has already ordered 15 examples for their own staff training," says Boque.
In the USA, schools say that recurrent training of mechanics is "encouraged, but not required" under current FAA regulations. Most airlines nevertheless regard recurrent training for their mechanics as essential and set up their own ongoing training programmes to ensure mechanics are current with evolving new technologies and maintenance techniques. Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) executive director Sarah MacLeod describes training as "critical to breeding the next generation of maintenance personnel" and she is a firm believer in initial and recurrent training. "The bottom line with today's aircraft technology is that any individual who isn't actively involved in a recurrent training programme is irresponsible," she says.
US industry organisations such as ARSA and the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) are also pushing for better training standards and guidelines. But as ARSA points out, introducing changes in the FAA's rulemaking can be a long and unwieldy process. The pending revision of FAA Part 145 that govern repair station operations was first considered in the mid-1970s, but is still mired in controversy.
"ARSA is dismayed that, after all this time, the FAA is still not able to put some commonsense and logic into its ratings system, the charter that governs the type of work that repair stations may perform," ARSA counsel Marshall Filler told a US House of Representatives aviation subcommittee. The final rule updating Part 145 was supposed to come into effect on 6 April, but has now been postponed by six months because of industry protestations that the agency has not yet published the advisory material needed to train personnel.
Clarifying the rules
Even though the new rules have been postponed, ARSA, AEA and other organisations are putting together training programmes in an effort to minimise misinterpretations of the new regulations. AEA is planning a training seminar just ahead of its annual conference in Orlando, Florida, later this month, while ARSA has its "train to gain" programmes and is offering Part 145 training seminars across the USA.
The FAA has told the GAO, however, that it will consider working with the aviation community to review current and future skill requirements for aviation mechanics, but the severe budget and resource constraints on the agency will make the task of creating and overseeing a new curriculum difficult. The FAA and some training schools also are concerned that the higher costs of more advanced courses could be discouraging to potential students, while the training equipment could be cost prohibitive for some smaller aviation maintenance schools.
The USA remains poised in its balancing act between getting its 160,000-plus aircraft mechanics and technicians broadly qualified at an affordable cost while catching up on 50 years of aircraft developments. Europe's gradual adaptation of the JAR 147 standard may well help show the way.
Source: Flight International
