How Having an A&P Benefitted Me Part #9
During my search for a new opportunity, an instructor job opened up internally with the airline. It was a maintenance training position teaching the Boeing 727. My time teaching and course development cinched me for the job. And it also helped that the hiring manager was a former KC-135A Crew Chief.
Other than the manager I was the only vet in the department and all the rest had been career airline mechanics and by this time I had made Tech in the ANG. If you didn’t know already, promotions in the ANG are pretty slow for non-fulltime personnel.
Off I went to a number of schools on the aircraft and engines and I started teaching classes. As is often the case the previous instructor left with short notice and so there was no transition training and I had to teach cold turkey. The main course lasted two weeks but things went okay and within about a year or so I was promoted to Senior Instructor.
Then one fateful day something great happened. I was sitting at my desk and my boss came and asked if I would meet with some Air Force guys from Wright-Pat. He didn’t really want to meet with them and figured I would be good since I was still in the Guard. They were doing some benchmarking of what the airlines saw as skill shortfalls on the part of military aircraft maintainers in the civilian maintenance world. It sounded like an interesting meeting and of course when the boss asks….
The next day, sometime in 1998 maybe, CMSgt Dan Santos and MSgt Jim Sullivan show up, both Crew Chiefs on fighters and currently working in the F-22 SPO. They explain that they are working a side project regarding what I mentioned in the previous paragraph and all the other airlines they had talked to already. We chatted for a few hours, they asked their questions and when they were done, they said that the ultimate goal was to put together a program that got military maintainers credit for their experience towards getting an A&P.
Part of the problem for military maintainers in the past had been that individual FAA inspectors at the different Flight Standards District Offices (FSDO) had widely ranging views on what experience military maintainers actually had. This resulted in some inspectors authorizing a particular AFSC to test and another inspector rejecting that same AFSC.
Dan and Sully were putting together a team of maintainers from all branches, FAA personnel, and representatives from airline maintenance to come up with a way to help every military maintainer get their A&P and get credit for their military training and experience. Previous attempts at this over the years had failed but they felt they had the right people on this team. Because of my military and civilian experience, including that of helping to set up the A&P school, they asked me to join the team. Honestly, I was pretty stunned because there were a lot of heavy hitters on the team, but I accepted. At the time it was called the DoD A&P Tiger Team and it was going to turn out to be an amazing experience.
Just a reminder. If I hadn’t had my A&P I would have never been asked to be an instructor at Sheppard and I wouldn’t have been working as an airline maintenance instructor.
Next installment – The DoD A&P Tiger Team.