MRO: an estimated need of 300,000 technicians worldwide
Although the French aeronautics sector does not experience an overall structural unemployment rate, it faces recruitment pressures. Particularly in the field of MRO, where technicians and skills are particularly sought…
“We have a big shortage of technicians, these are rare skills and training times are very long in this profession,” comments Mathieu Blondel, Partner and head of the Air Transport skills center at Arthur D. Little.
The observation is also the same at Vallair, via its founder and CEO Grégoire Lebigot, one of the two MRO operators in Europe to have a training center, Aircraft Academy, founded in 2023 in Châteauroux - the other being Lufthansa -, with a specifically dedicated Airbus A321. “There is a global shortage of around 300,000 technicians. Airbus has declared that there are 700,000 technicians to be trained over a period of 15 years. It is obvious that it will take time to respond to this market demand,” he assures.
The COVID pandemic has accelerated the exit of experts from the maintenance market, i.e. technicians or engineers at the age limit whose skills are both currently rare and in demand. Companies working in MRO are faced with two major problems. The first is to train technicians intended to operate on aircraft. “We have a large generation of technicians retiring, which creates a massive need for renewal in addition to the growth of the MRO activity,” comments Mathieu Blondel.
400 people trained each year in France
This problem is compounded by the fact that the number of new entrants, i.e. trained and qualified people, with the appropriate level of certification, still remains very low in France. “We did a study for the FNAM a few years ago and looked at how many technicians France trains each year. We are really talking about small numbers, around 400 people,” continues Mathieu Blondel.
Machine-translated from French
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- La Tribune27 Oct, 07:00
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