All Aircraft Engineers. Please help with my AME survey!

[capitaine flam]

Hello. I am a recent grad and currently carrying out research into aircraft maintenance engineer training and standards, military and civil (to use for my forthcoming Masters).

I understand that training standards and methods are currently no longer the same as they were a decade or two ago. I thought that rather than ask paper pushers or people at desk what the training is like, the best people to ask would have to be the actual engineers who have done the study and have got the experience.


Edit on 24/01/2014: The survey is closed now. Thanks to everyone who has helped. I have got 120 surveys filled and I will post results on this thread once I have processed the data. Much obliged to everyone who helped:



Approved by the Towers

[Fargoo]

Done! I suspect given the questions asked you may just get a lot of very similar opinions.

Good survey. :ok:

[capitaine flam]

Thank you very much for taking the time to do the survey. Really appreciated!:)

[Terry McCassey]

Happy to help you !

[ukv1145]

Done, would be very interested in the results!

[capitaine flam]

I will post the results once I collect enough responses. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks. Thanks for everyone who is taking the time to answer.:ok:

[clarkieboy]

Done. Like everyone else, I shall be very interested in the results.........

[Rigga]

Good luck - Could be interesting to see the results

[NutLoose]

Done :)


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[spannersatcx]

have you tried asking on airmech, probably more people over there?

[TURIN]

If you go to Airmech there will be a knob gag in two posts. :}

Survey done. Good luck. :ok:

[capitaine flam]

Thank you for suggesting Airmech. I will put the survey on there too! Cheers.:)

I am trying to get at least a good 200 responses (and more if possible) before putting results together.

[Drayman]

Also done. I suspect your results will also be grouped by age.

[matkat]

Done, good questions:ok:

[Mike Echo]

Done - I'll be interested when you post the results!

[ohmygodnotmorework]

Completed survey. Clever questions, am looking forward to seeing results, hopefully those in power will notice too!:D

[B1-3]

Have you thought about approaching the head of EASA and UK TransportMinister with your results?

I'm sure we have all seen the UK CAA shrink behind the Glass panels atGatwick. We must have two way comms with the CAA policy makers and not bedriven by the big airlines. As LAE’s in Europe we started on an uneven playing fieldwhen we got our 66 licence and the CAA keeps digging it up with every revisionof Part 66.

Learning about an A380 is all well and good but when the aircraft you workon is older than the bloke who designed the A380 you must question why you arestressing over passing an exam geared solely to a state of the art piece of techoperated by 5% of UK aviation.

Sorry off topic, back under my rock I will crawl.

[gsy boy]

An interesting survey, and I will be interested to see the results, especially what people's thoughts are on the awful EASA 66 licence shambles which in my view has further downgraded the already low status of licensed engineers, and don't get me started me on the B2 licence, how can that be compared to the old BCAR 'X' licence/trade.

[B1-3]

Well said young man.

[capitaine flam]

Hi B1-3 and gsy boy

Thanks for your comments. I am awaiting a few more answers to the survey (need about 20 more) then I'll work on compiling results.

I fully appreciate what you are both saying having experienced myself first hand trying to become an AME as a mature person, only to find out once I got onto a degree (thinking there would be lots of hands-on etc) that there was not going to be much hands-on. The exact words I received when I enquired about practice in the college's hangar were "oh, you are on a degree. If you want hands on, you need to do a National Diploma".

Since my own children are up to National Diploma age, it was very interesting to see all these young lads and ladettes attempting to learn aircraft maintenance engineering in the most appalling fashion. Since I do have a head for academia, I decided to start looking into all this business as I could see youth being completely failed by lack of real apprenticeships etc. Really heartbreaking to be honest. No wonder as a nation we are short of real competent engineers.

However, it was not all bad for me as I did manage to get a fair amount of hand practice, sneaking in with the national diplomas practice lesson, and was lucky to have met a couple of decent, very experienced AMEs from a local domestic carrier who let me come and work on the line for a few weeks to get hands on practice on live aircraft at a major airport. It was through several conversations with experienced staff that it started to become apparent that there was something wrong in the current way of training people.

The result?? I very quickly discovered that there was no way I could become a truly competent maintenance engineer with just that kind of experience, although the experience I did get was really useful for me. Real competence would require some serious apprenticeships, lots of practice and not studying to "pass exams". (Thankfully, something that I don't personally do, but that many people do do). When I found out also that people could find "answer banks" on-line for the Part 66 exams, I became even more disillusioned.

My excellent degree (and I have to say that it was very good and not just AME stuff but a lot of traditional mechanical engineering) could not even get me a foot in the door at major MROs.

So I had to re-think my whole career plan. I know that I won't be able to become a licensed AME at my age now, but I have a good job in aviation related engineering and can dedicate time and personal conviction to certainly champion changes. Who knows if anyone will listen, but at least some research can be done, some papers can be written and passed on, and perhaps it will help in the long run.

Cheers to everyone who is helping!:ok:

[camlobe]

capitaine flam,

Have just completed your (second) questionnaire. Good questions which I hopefully have given good answers to.

Please advise the outcome of your results.

P.S.

No, you are not too old. There are octogenarians out there with Licences, and they are bloody good Engineers still.

Camlobe