Accelerated, 12 Month A&P Curriculum Offered
Having grown since a 2006 ownership change from a small operation with a handful of Piper Warriors and a single Seneca to a leading Part 141 flight academy comprising six locations and a fleet of 120 aircraft, US Aviation Academy is no stranger to rapid progress.
On 16 May 2023 the Academy set forth that it had launched its second Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) training location at San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI)—a public-use airport in southeast-central Texas’s Caldwell County.
US Aviation Academy’s new FAA Part 147-approved aircraft mechanic school will host its first class in June 2023. The facility’s A&P program spans an intensive 12 months—a veritable sprint viewed against competing institutions’ curricula, which typically stretch over two-years.
Training at US Aviation Academy’s HYI installation includes hands-on shop time comprising in part the identification, removal, rebuilding, fabrication, and troubleshooting of various aircraft components. The training’s didactic aspect consists of lectures covering the various structures and systems of modern aircraft. US Aviation provides students with the entireties of the books, tools, and materials requisite A&P training. What’s more, for purpose of maximizing training relevance, the school retains a Learjet upon which students may hone their nascent mechanical skills.
According to global industrial and technological consultancy Oliver Wyman: “Aviation executives ranked a potential mechanic shortage MRO’s [Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul] number-one headache.”
Industry wide, the Aviation Technical Education Council (ATEC), Boeing, and Oliver Wyman have collectively predicted massive shortages of A&P mechanics over the coming decade. Airlines, already feeling the proverbial pinch, are currently offering qualified A&P new-hires sign-on bonuses as high as $50,000.
Numerous local employment opportunities exist in the vicinity of US Aviation Academy’s new HYI facility, which is situated a scant 21-nautical-miles from Austin, Texas’s Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) a brief thirty-nautical-miles from Randolph Air Force Base, and an eminently reasonable 38-nautical-miles from San Antonio, Texas’s San Antonio International Airport (SAT).
The prevailing need for aviation professionals—pilots, aircraft maintainers, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, dispatchers, etc.—is unprecedented. Graduates from US Aviation Academy may reasonably look forward to securing high-paying, upwardly-mobile employment in as little as 12 months.