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AMROBA 1st Newsletter for 2024 -

Reference:Volume-21-Issue-1-January-2024

Critical Shortage of Maintenance Personnel?

We start this year with the same critical shortage of Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AME) and Licenced AMEs to service the Helicopter sector and General Aviation (GA) Aeroplane sector.

30 plus years and still no aircraft maintenance engineer vocational trade training courses for the helicopter or CASR Part 23 aeroplane sector’s mechanical trade streams. 

There is one vocational pathway for the Part 25 aeroplane trade stream that supports the airline’s three trades streams of avionics, mechanical and structures. The other sectors are supported by a two trade streams, avionics and mechanical.

After our first meeting with CASA this year, we now know that there will be no regulatory change to address the shortage of aircraft maintenance personnel and LAMEs, simply because CASA said “there will be no regulatory change”. So, we are stuck with the system that creates a shortage of personnel.

• The regulatory system is “broke”, the VET training system is also broken, but repairable.

The problem that fails to be recognised is there are three (3) separate AME mechanical training pathways in the non-airline sector but only one pathway that exists in the VET system.

The second problem is that CASA does not acknowledge VET qualifications.

Regulatory Systems - worldwide

Regulatory systems worldwide are more harmonised today, than at any other time in my 60 plus years of participating in civil aviation. In every system there is basically the same maintenance concepts as included in CAR/CASRs requiring the person signing a maintenance release to meet the standards of Annex 1, Chapter 4 and Annex 8, Chapter 6.6.6. Their licenced AMEs, however named, all certify the aircraft as airworthy at completion of work. We should be no different. The maintenance and aircraft records required to be kept are closely aligned. The maintenance and aircraft records that approved AMOs need to keep are very closely globally aligned.

Our fleets are not so different, and their safety records are as good as, or better, than Australia.

Foreign LAMEs: To provide our employers with qualified staff that the Australian training system doesn’t produce, a fast-track system of recognising foreign LAMEs is required so current maintenance organisations can service the non-airline aircraft fleet and the industry maintainer experience is maintained.

CASA’s modular self-study pathway, pass CASA Part 66 module examinations is the only way to address this issue in the short term.  In house on-the-job training will add costs to operating a business. As maintenance employers state, the bureaucracy has caused the problem but have taken no action to correct the shortage of maintenance personnel they created for over 2 decades.  Part 21 realignment with FAR Part 21.

In addition, getting engineering fields of design, manufacture and maintenance harmonised globally is not even being contemplated. Aviation engineering/maintenance is not unique to Australia; it is a global industry with global standards that all other mature safe nations are or have implemented.

CASA told industry harmonisation would happen years ago post a CASA/FAA bilateral agreement meeting. They stated they would realign CASR Part 21 with FAR Part 21 applauded by industry. 

Same action as last year and years before, no action.

Regulatory Reform. If done correctly, the results should return civil aviation, especially the non-airline sectors, to the participation rates pre the creation of CARs/CASRs. However, how many more regimes of government and CASA will come and go before Regulatory Reform, originally direct by Parliament in the late 1990s, is completed? 

MTF...P2