Taken from an article in the ALAE Tech Log
http://www.lae.mcmail.com/pages/FrameSet1.htm Is there a shortage of Licensed Aircraft Engineers? This question was posed by Tech
Log of its readership in August 1970. It would appear that the author of the article did not
really believe such a situation existed, in spite of the CAA (known at the time as the ARB)
assessment of the LAE population. Tech Log quoted the ARB figures for the previous five
years. They had set out a neat table of numbers to show how many new Licences were
issued, how many extensions and how many renewals. Our article compared the figures
over the five-year period and found that there was in fact an increase of 23% over the
five years, in new Licences and 15.6% increase in renewals over the same period. The
writer stated that the statistics disproved the ARB case that there was a shortage. I feel
that he missed the point here, it is illogical to assume that just because more people
were taking and renewing Licences, that there could not have been a shortage. He failed
to mention the existing demand for engineers. We could have 5000 new Licences a year,
but if industry is calling for 10,000 licensed engineers to certify their fleets, then Hey, we
have a shortage.
So here we are in 2000, thirty years on and we still have a shortage, and only now the
situation is looking dire! Amazingly, the number of new Licences is only down by 90 over
the last five-year period. So it would appear that roughly the same number of people are
slogging through the licensing process as did thirty years ago. What is not happy news is
the fact that renewals are down by 11,100 (this is not a misprint). The inescapable
conclusion one comes to is that LAE's are leaving the industry in their droves. It could be
that many are not renewing until they can convert to a JAR-66 licence. Let's hope so.
Which big airline? BA? Average eng wage at man for FCL incl shift is 35K MON etc on around that.
Shortage of Licenced Engineers 
Linear Mode
