Blacksheep Quote:
...its a massive investment, and in comparision not as rewarding as other careers given the responsibility.
Given the time and effort needed to acquire the licence, endorsed with enough significant type ratings to command the £50k that one poster has mentioned, any basic Cost-Benefit Analysis would reject aircraft maintenance as a career.
In my own case, had I invested exactly the same amount of time and effort in another career I would by now be a doctor, dentist, chartered accountant or a partner in a law firm and would consider a salary of £50k to be laughable.
Look at it this way, you are almost a qualified gynecologist,
only the holes you have to try to work in are often smaller and further away from the task in hand, and 99% of the time it probably smells better.
On a serious note, yes there is a shortage and one thing driving it is the reduction in the size of the RAF etc..... when I left the RAF and did my licences in the early 80's it still had engineering capabilities of a decent size, with that getting smaller and smaller there is a lack of suitable engineers coming onto the market from those sources and the Civil sector has never done anything to redress the problem, far from it they have gone the opposite direction... and it will only get worse.