AMTSociety has taken the past few months to step back and review many aspects of our organization. As I’ve said in past columns in Aircraft Maintenance Technology magazine and in the monthly AMTSociety newsletter, AMTSociety is progressing through its own period of transition. This presents an opportunity to evaluate the current mission of AMTSociety, while considering what the true mission and core activities of the AMTSociety should be to best serve our members and industry partners.

From time to time, it’s important to take a step back and consider what our industry needs from us and determine what value we can bring to everyone involved. This doesn’t necessarily come easy or quick, and I believe the results of quick reaction may not always be in the best interest of an organization.

Some of the recent activities of AMTSociety have included establishing a plan to continue with the AMTSociety Roadshow Consortium. AMTSociety also has reviewed online training offerings, current member benefits, and current corporate sponsor programs. Progress is being made.

In the near future, we will be sending a survey to our members and partners to understand what you feel is important.

One additional initiative has been outreach to other industry organizations. Establishing relationships with other industry organizations is one way of better understanding our industry. This also provides the ability to potentially collaborate on initiatives beneficial to not only our members but the maintenance community and the industry.

Here’s a short update on a few of the previously mentioned initiatives.   

Member Benefits

One of the important functions of an organization such as ours is to offer benefits to its members. A few of the member benefits currently offered range from discounted automobile rental, a subscription to Aircraft Maintenance Technology magazine, access to Avjobs.com and the NCATT database, a free Snap-on screwdriver for new members, and more. We are in discussions with additional aviation companies and organizations, and are looking for ways in which AMTSociety can provide its members with additional high-value benefits aimed at advancing the role of the aircraft maintenance professional. There’s more to come.

Training and Education Update

We’re pleased to announce a few enhancements to our training offerings.  As you likely know, both the online and live education offerings are accepted by the FAA for Inspection Authorization renewal and for the FAASTeam AMT Awards. We are finalizing agreements with additional speakers for all the live IA renewal events in an effort to provide attendees with some new, high-quality educational sessions.

We’ve taken a hard look at determining exactly where and when to hold our live training events, as well as the number of events. Many factors are considered when establishing these live events, affectionately known as the AMTSociety Roadshow Consortium, including speaker availability, facility availability, and historical attendee information. We’ve had to face the reality that not all of the past locations where AMTSociety historically offered education will be continued in the next series of training events.

New and additional online training courses will also be made available in the months ahead on the AMTSociety website. Our goal at this time is to enhance all the training offered by providing a greater selection of online offerings while providing live events of greater value at select locations around the country.

At this time the following dates and locations are confirmed:

Houston, Texas, November 20, 2013.

Atlanta, Georgia, January 8, 2014.

Kansas City, Missouri, February 12, 2014

Aurora, Colorado, (Denver area) March 5, 2014. 

The AMTSociety website will soon have updated information and registration details available, and we’ll announce other locations and details as they become available. As always, if any member wishes to speak with me I can be reached at [email protected]

Thank you. Ronald (Ron) Donner, AMTSociety Executive Director and Business Manager.

GA Awards Program

This summer I attended the 2013 AirVenture in Oshkosh Wisconsin. On Thursday, August 1 was the General Aviation Awards ceremony. Representatives from numerous organizations and industry associations participated providing well-deserved recognition for the award recipients. This awards program is a cooperative effort between these sponsors from the aviation industry and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The selection process begins with local FAA offices, and panels of aviation professionals from within four fields then select national winners from the group of regional winners. The winners of this year’s GA Awards were:

AMT of the Year: William "Bill" Fifles of Honolulu, Hawaii

Avionics Tech of the Year: Bruce Allen Lundquist of Willis, Michigan 

CFI of the Year: Dean Wesley Eichholz of Soldotna, Alaska  

FAASTeam Representative of the Year: Mark Edward Madden of Anchorage, Alaska 

The nomination process for the 2014 GA Awards Program is open and nominations must be submitted by the end of September 2013. For more information visit www.generalaviationawards.com.