Students at Virginia Aviation in Lynchburg are earning valuable experience for their future

By Ray Reed

Published: June 1, 2008

The comfort word in business circles recently has been “insulated,” meaning that certain sectors are not experiencing the economic slowdown that is reflected in job losses and fewer factory orders.

One of those insulated sectors is aircraft maintenance, says Bob Howell of Virginia Aviation in Lynchburg.

Howell heads the three-member teaching staff in the company’s Airframe and Power Plant School, a fairly new venture that has five graduates and a class of six students now enrolled.

Job security for airplane mechanics would appear to be good. The number of aircraft is forecast to increase substantially because sales of business jets are on a steady climb, according to forecasts from Honeywell Aerospace, a plane manufacturer, and Rolls Royce, an engine maker with plans for a new plant at Petersburg.

Rolls Royce forecasts that 4,000 business jets per year industry-wide will be sold over the next 20 years. Honeywell said it expects to sell 1,400 of them, and deliveries were up 11 percent in 2007, the fourth year in a row of growth after a downturn hit the entire airline and aircraft industry following the 9-11 attacks.

Honda plans to build two factories in the Greensboro, N.C., area to produce business jets and the engines for them.

Growth, coupled with an exodus of veteran pilots and other aviation-industry personnel after the early 2000s trough, means the aircraft industry is flush with career opportunities, Howell says.

Businesses see planes costing $4 million and up as an investment in executives’ productivity, which can be enhanced by avoiding the delays associated with commercial airlines.

Potential students who would work on such planes can expect about $15 an hour or more in their first jobs, which are almost a sure thing for successful graduates, Howell said. It’s hard to find enough prospective students who want to work with their hands, however, he said.

Marty Wright, who graduated from the Airframe and Power Plant School in May, said he initially was drawn to the program for the range of fields to which he could apply the skills he planned to learn.

“They teach you everything you need to know about an airplane,” he said, but his thoughts ran on a different track.

“I was thinking about the sheet metal and hydraulic systems so I could work for a company like John Deere or Caterpillar,” he said.

But now that he’s found a passion for aircraft, the 20-year-old said he doesn’t plan to leave the field anytime soon.

“As long as the field will treat me the way I hope it does, I hope to stay in aviation for a while,” he said, noting that he’s looking at potential jobs with the Lynchburg Regional Airport, the Roanoke airport and Falwell Jet Aviation.

He said the knowledge of job security helped him in his career decision.

“Especially with the happenings in airlines recently; they need mechanics bad.”

Virginia Aviation’s school, at the Lynchburg Airport, has small planes and several jet engines for its hands-on classes in power-plant technology, hydraulics, electrical theory, metals and composite materials.

Jim Lampman, owner of Virginia Aviation’s operations including charter aircraft, said he started the school because it was hard to find employees who were competent in avionics, the electronic components of aircraft. Applicants from other A&P schools “didn’t have a really good grip” on the specialty, Lampman said.

“We started this so we could use the top graduates in our own maintenance facility,” Lampman said.

It takes awhile for A&P schools to become profitable on their own, Lampman said, because of the cost of acquiring planes and engines for them to study.

Howell said the school has room for 12 students per class, and it hopes to enroll a full class when the school’s next session opens in August.

Classes run six hours per day for 18 months. Tuition is about $20,000, but those who pay it up front qualify for a discount.

To a young student just starting the program, “18 months is an eternity,” Lampman said. But those who look back after completing the program say they “feel like they just started,” Lampman said.

Howell said the certificate the graduates earn from the Federal Aviation Administration actually is more like “a license to learn.” The A&P school qualifies students to work on every part of a plane, but further specialty training on engines, hydraulic systems or avionics will come at the hands of their first employer, he said.

Howell said his problem has been finding enough students.

“We have trouble recruiting because there are not a lot of kids coming out of high school that are interested in working with their hands in technical jobs,” Howell said. Many youngsters just want to work with computers, he said.

“Somebody has got to fix this stuff,” Howell said. Aircraft maintenance and inspection “are things you can’t automate.”

Such jobs, however, can be off-shored. Many airlines are sending their planes to repair shops that have been opened in low-wage countries, Howell said.

On the other hand, pending legislation that could stiffen requirements for Federal Aviation Administration oversight of plane safety could result in more of those repair jobs being done in the United States, Howell said.

Virginia Aviation may not be the only A&P school in Lynchburg. Liberty University wants to open its own school, because students in its aviation program who hope to become missionary pilots must be able to repair the planes they fly into remote areas.

- Staff writer Dave Thompson contributed.