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AME Shortage Tightens

The Canadian helicopter industry is struggling with an aircraft
maintenance engineer (AME) shortage that threatens to get worse before
it gets better.

AMEs
are either retiring or walking away from aviation at an alarming rate.
The Canadian Aviation Maintenance Council (CAMC) estimates that Canada
needs approximately 900 new AMEs a year for the next six years just to
replenish the existing skills pool and keep pace with a 2% annual
employment growth rate. Any increase above 2% pushes demand higher.

Furthermore,
CAMC suggests that the shortage cannot be headed off before 2005.
Traditional sources for recruitment such as the military and
immigration are drying up, the consequence of cutbacks in defence
spending at home and a skills shortage abroad that threatens to erode
Canada’s supply of AMEs even further. Besides, the Canadian Forces is
expected to lose 40% of its AME workforce over the next five years.

It
all makes uneasy reading for helicopter operators and AMOs specializing
in rotary-wing repair and overhaul. And while there is not a national
database to pinpoint the optimal mix and location of current AMEs, the
shortage appears to grow more acute the further one travels from
central and southern Canada – hitting the helicopter industry where it
lives.