For the latest in our continuing series of eight post-pandemic features, we sat down with the MRO industry’s trade body, the Aeronautical Repair Station Association, to understand the ongoing dynamics.
As the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) industry looks towards the acceleration out of COVID travel restrictions, we sat down with Brett Levanto, vice president of operations at the Aeronautical Repair Station Association, the trade body for the civil aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul industry, for a big-picture view on how the industry is changing — and what comes next.
Since 2019, “the primary change for the industry isn’t really a change, but an acceleration of a trend: the increasing challenge of finding and retaining technical talent,” Levanto says. “Career development has been a growing crisis for my entire decade working in the industry — and even before that.”
This is a common theme across aviation: airlines, airports, ground handlers, and many more of the industry’s sub-sectors are all telling us similar stories. Given that a substantial part of the industry’s workforce can seek jobs between parts of the industry, or head out the door with their technical skills, this attractivity gap needs to be filled.
Within the MRO world, Levanto explains, “the pandemic created a whirlwind through which aviation businesses were losing employees while trying to keep their doors open. Those employees often found other work or took the opportunity to retire, so when repair stations saw their order books rebound there weren’t people on the floor to get the work done. Filling vacancies has become daunting, let alone trying to construct a workforce strategically that will help businesses grow into the future.”
There was a time where in-house maintenance at an airline meant that technical employees had access to some of the airline benefits that have kept other kinds of industry jobs attractive even through tight labour markets. Is it time to return to insourcing, or will we see some larger MROs offer benefits with airlines, either within larger corporate groupings or as a bilateral deal?
Fundamentally, he notes, “across our membership we’ve seen the importance of balance. The companies that fared best during the downturn either were already in industry segments that remained bullish — cargo or business aviation — or were able to lean on those areas of an already diverse business portfolio. The repair station industry was incredibly resilient during the downturn, often because their specialties were broadly applicable.”
Remote work, connectivity and communication bring benefits and risks
The technological acceleration effects of COVID lockdowns has been substantial across industry. In aviation, some areas have even seen de-digitalisation and re-digitalisation as processes that had been automated suddenly had to be done manually. But what are the top three best new business practices, tools, or methodologies across the activities of MRO organisations that are available now, which weren’t in 2019?
“For ARSA, numbers one, two and three are all remote connectivity,” Levanto says. “We’ve been pressing the issue since 2018, when the FAA was incredibly reluctant to allow virtual communications be used for oversight and inspections. The pandemic created the perfect scenario for sudden action in the form of agency acknowledgement that the rules didn’t prohibit such communications, so they were therefore allowed.”
However, he notes, “as the government has embraced telework and allowed more and more dispersion in its workforce, we’re hearing from members that key regulatory functions are getting dramatically slowed down. Not just in the FAA, though we heard a lot about the challenges of managing a more-mobile workforce during our fall roundtables this year. Other government functions like customs inspections for parts delivery are slowing down to a crawl.”
Digital innovation in the regulatory space is already reaping rewards
Compliance with regulatory requirements is a critical part of MRO operations, and here two new digital innovations are, even in their early iterations, bringing benefits to repair shops.
When it comes to a question about what the most impactful digital changes have been within the industry, Levanto answers thoughtfully: “Remembering that ‘impactful’ doesn’t necessarily mean positive or negative — and the jury is often still out — I want to call out two key digital changes by the FAA in the past two years.”
“The first,” he says, “is the migration of the online rules at eCFR.gov to a new platform. After traveling the learning curve, the new system is intuitive to navigate, has better search functions that the previous platform and allows you to link directly to a sub paragraph… something very important to building useful manuals and digital documents.”
The eCFR is the continually updated electronic version of the Code of Federal Regulations, the official print publication that codifies all the general and permanent rules laid down via publication in the Federal Register by federal government departments and agencies. It is composed of XML files that are updated, tracked and available via API for revision tracking, search and metadata.
Returning to the benefits, Levanto says that “the second is the rollout of the Dynamic Regulatory System. The jury is definitely still out on the DRS — searching and referencing specific sources can be tough — but the goal of getting all regulatory compliance content into a single, searchable interface is certainly laudable. From an association that urges its members to go and read primary sources every time there’s a question, this is important.”
The DRS consolidates information and guidance material from the FAA’s Office of Aviation Safety into a single point of reference. This material includes airworthiness directives, advisory circulars, design and production approvals, advisory and rulemaking committee documents, and much more. The DRS’ information sources include the Regulatory Guidance System, Flight Standards Information System, and a dozen other repositories of information.
As the industry looks towards 2025 and beyond, Levanto flags that “what’s most important is how the industry — and its regulators — react to innovations. We’re fond of pointing out that most ‘emerging technologies’ we celebrate in aviation have darn well ‘emerged’ in countless other places before they end up on an aircraft.”
“Our industry tends to wring its hands over safety implications and oversight impacts when the approach is right in front of us,” Levanto concludes, suggesting that the industry “rely on the performance-based nature of the rules and incorporate whatever’s ‘new’ into existing systems.”
Author: John Walton
Published: 22nd December 2022
Image: Courtesy of Rolls-Royce
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