The mission of aviation maintenance training schools across the country is to ensure that new AMTs are ready to enter the workforce. To be truly “ready” for the awesome responsibility of keeping the world safely in flight requires more than technical skill and mechanical savvy, it demands aviation professionals truly understand the impact of their work. The member institutions of the Aviation Technician Education Council (ATEC) work tirelessly to provide students with all of the tools they will need to succeed in the workforce, support aviation business, and keep passengers and cargo safe and on time. How seriously do A&P schools take this responsibility? See for yourself through the eyes of industry professional Jay Dankoff, graduate of ATEC member school MIAT College of Technology:

Everyone has a moment that changes the way that they approach their profession, one that is permanently branded into what makes that person tick. Like all AMT prospects, I had to invest thousands of hours in required training, study advanced sciences and engineering principals, and give up a noteworthy amount of sleep, all while incurring a healthy bit of debt. Though our curriculum and its administration are set to see some much-needed updates in the near future, I found that every morsel of knowledge that I gained in technical training was beneficial to my career. Looking back on all of those hours of study and application, there was one lesson that I learned while in technical training that was not part of the required curriculum, yet was undoubtedly one of the most defining and important lessons from my whole training experience.

Preparing mechanics for industry challenges

One evening I stayed late at the training center and got the opportunity to talk with one of the gray-haired instructors. Knowing that he had retired from a 30-plus year career as a major airline mechanic, I was interested in understanding why he was working at the AMT school. I jokingly asked him if the retired life was too boring for him, or if I should look into a career field with better retirement options. I was taken aback by the unexpected response I received, and it took a while for it to really sink in.

He told me that during a large portion of his career, he was responsible for trimming the airline’s 727 engines at night, in order to prepare them for the flight schedule of the following day. He said that most nights he only had himself and a trainee to get the job done, and they would have several planes to do. He also said that two experienced technicians are really needed to get the work done reliably, one in the cockpit and one at the engine, working in careful coordination. He felt like he was being forced to make due. He shared with me the terrible nervous feeling he experienced every morning when the planes started taking off; he always hoped they would perform the way that they were supposed to and fly safely. The words that followed changed me:

“That is no way to live, and it isn’t a career to be proud of,” he said. “Now, I want to make sure that I can help future mechanics prepare for challenges like this, to help repair some things I left unfixed.”

He wanted to have an effect on the industry and felt that he owed it to himself. His story really shifted my view of our responsibilities as aviation maintenance technicians from simply doing a good job, to an understanding that it is really much more: each and every one of us has an effect on the system as a whole. Every day we are either making our industry stronger, or we are allowing it to degrade.

It can become very easy to be overwhelmed by the bureaucracy, the heavy-handed regulation, and the slow-moving wheels of the aviation industry, and feel like we do not really have that much of an appreciable impact. In reality, we are often the only people who can have an impact on industry safety, by making an important decision. A decision to look for the opportunities to help ourselves, our organizations, and our coworkers grow. A decision to share our experience with others, to submit changes that could improve the reliability of aviation maintenance, to be a voice that protects the airworthiness of our aircraft. A daily decision that results, when we look back, in a career worthy of pride.

How will your decisions affect our industry?

Learn more about ATEC at www.atec-amt.org, MIAT College of Technology at www.miat.edu and Convergent Performance at www.convergentperformance.com.

Jay A. Dankoff is a lead instructor of aviation maintenance safety at Convergent Performance. He was one of AMT's 2015 Next Gen Award winners. You can read more about him at: http://www.aviationpros.com/article/12128576/amt-next-gen-award-jay-a-dankoff.