Aviation: A&P Mechanic

wrote in message
ups.com...
The U.S. has to be the easiest place in the world to get an aircraft
mechanic's ticket. Here in Canada there are four requirements: Formal
training, which normally takes place in a tech school and will take
close to two years; Experience, which is 48 months, and up to 24 months
of the tech school training may count toward that, but in any case it
will take you four years in total; Tasks, which must include at least
70% of the ATA tasks listed for the type of aircraft the license
covers; And four written exams, same as in the US, except that in
Canada you can't get exam question and answer books: you have to
actually know the stuff, and you have no idea what they might ask you.
All of the schooling, experience and tasks have to be documented and
certified. There are two Maintenance licences, the M1 which covers all
non-turbojet, non-transport category aircraft, and the M2 which covers
the rest. There's an S (structural) license, and an E (avionics)
license, too. Restoration can count but it has to be done under the
supervision of a licensed mechanic. Homebuilts don't count: they're
airplanes as far as registering, airworthiness, insuring, pilot
licensing and air law are concerned, but not for building or
maintaining.
You gotta want to be a mechanic pretty bad to do it here.

Dan


And yet I've seen Canada-maintained aircraft which were right doggy, if you
ask me. One I'm familiar with shouldn't even have been allowed to fly into
this country, it was so unairworthy.

And on this side of the border, we've seen some American airplanes
that should have been shot down and scrapped. It all comes down to how
seriously the mechanic takes his responsibilities and how much pride he
takes in his work. People are people on both sides of the border,
mechanics and owners both. High standards are no guarantee of quality,
but it helps.

There is rumblings in the industry in the US that the FAA is looking
at the training and licensing issues here. I think that in the
future, we will look more like Canada and Europe in the way we license
Engineers/Technicians. To this point the industry has been very
successfully in self regulating and we have had a safe system.

The big thing driving the FAA to move is the economics of commercial
airlines and repair stations and looking at recent accidents. The
ratio of maintenance to pilot caused accidents has trended up
drastically and because of the requirements for recurrent training,
pilot caused accidents have gone down. The quality of the average
airline mechanic has gone down as aircraft complexity has gone up.
From my direct experience, I see the same in large repair centers.

Having to make repairs to jets I have been involved with over the
years, I have been very impressed with our Canadian brothers.



On 23 Dec 2004 11:03:15 -0800, wrotD:

And on this side of the border, we've seen some American airplanes
that should have been shot down and scrapped. It all comes down to how
seriously the mechanic takes his responsibilities and how much pride he
takes in his work. People are people on both sides of the border,
mechanics and owners both. High standards are no guarantee of quality,
but it helps.


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