Career in Aircraft Maintenance

What: World-wide, the business of aircraft maintenance is enormous, and is set to expand. The approximate number of aeroplanes currently in service world-wide is around 500,000 passenger and cargo aircraft and about four million smaller private aircraft used for business or pleasure.

India is one of the fastest developing countries in the world. Due to the liberalisation policies of the government, there is tremendous growth in civil aviation. Many private airlines and corporations are operating today with very good operating revenues. To meet the growing need of the passenger airlines, cargo aircrafts, private air taxi operators, business and corporate jets, there exists an urgent need for aircraft maintenance engineers.

The aviation industry has two main branches: flying branch and maintenance branch. While pilots fly the aircraft, aircraft maintenance engineers are concerned with the maintenance of the aircraft. An aircraft maintenance engineer has to obtain a licence from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Remuneration in this field is very attractive. In Indian Airlines, Air India, Pawan Hans and other private airlines, engineers get a starting gross salary of about 25,000 to 40,000 pm which goes up to 1.20 lakh, whereas the total training cost is only around 1.25 lakh.

How:  Aircraft maintenance engineers also learn to set engine controls and to test for their correct functioning. They play a major role among the maintenance personnel to keep the aircraft ‘airworthy’ at all times. The maintenance of modern sophisticated aircrafts calls for high degree of technical knowledge, competence, proficiency, dexterity and integrity on part of the concerned personnel. Aircraft engineers research, design, manufacture and maintain aircraft. They work on any and every mechanical aspect of the craft, including airframes, hydraulics and pneumatics, engines and fuel systems and control and communications systems. Engineers are involved in the following stages of aircraft production and manufacture: the design of new products such as components or entire engines; the manufacture and assembly of aircraft parts; research into solutions for complex engineering problems; maintenance of the finished craft to ensure safety and operational status.

Where: A course in aircraft maintenance engineering is not a degree but a licence course and only those institutes approved by the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) impart training in this subject. The minimum eligibility criterion for getting admission into any one of the institutes is 10+2 or equivalent with physics, chemistry and mathematics.

Institutions:

• School of Aviation Science & Technology, Delhi
• Indian Institute of Aeronautics, School of Aeronautics and Indian Institute of Aeronautical science, New Delhi
• Institute of Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, Rajiv Gandhi Aviation Academy, Hyderabad
• Nehru College of Aeronautics & Applied Sciences, Luknow
• Air Force Technical College, Kolkata
• Bangalore and Mechanical Training Institute, Madras.