Podcast: Electrification, Hydrogen And A&P Testing Barriers

Editors discuss the newest issue of Inside MRO, delving into features on electric technologies, testing barriers for U.S. A&P students, Ryanair’s evolving aftermarket and development of hydrogen fuel cells for aviation.

Subscribe Now

Don't miss a single episode. Subscribe to Aviation Week's MRO Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.

Discover all of our podcasts at aviationweek.com/podcasts.

Transcript

Lee Ann Shay:               Welcome to the MRO Podcast. Today we're going to talk about a variety of topics, including how emerging electric technologies and hydrogen are changing the aftermarket problems that are hindering the certification of new A&P mechanics in the US, as well as Ryanair amongst other subjects. You might be wondering how this all fits together. I'm Lee Ann Shay, executive editor for MRO and Business Aviation for Aviation Week and Editor of Inside MRO. And I'm here with my colleagues, Lindsay Bjerregaard, who's the managing editor of MRO across the group, and James Pozzi, our MRO Editor for the EMEA region. Lindsay and James, welcome. We just sent one of our best-ever issues of Inside MRO to the printer, and we wanted to share some highlights about this issue with all of our listeners. Lindsay and James, you along with Graham Warwick, who is Aviation Week and Space Technologies, a technology editor, wrote our cover story on electric technologies and how they're shaping the industry in a variety of ways. With all of this reporting from infrastructure, maintenance training, engine development, et cetera. What stands out to you?

Lindsay Bjerreg...:         The thought process behind the story was that aviation sustainability goals are driving a lot of electrification, both of aircraft and some of the ground support equipment that's being used in the maintenance world. So I focused on the advanced air mobility eVTOL portion of it. James focused on ground support equipment and Graham focused on electrification of engines and retrofits and that sort of thing. So I can maybe give you a few takeaways from the eVTOL portion. Since there are still quite a few companies in that space, we don't have the winners yet. I focused on the current top five on SMG Consulting's AAM Reality Index. And it sort of seems like there's a mix of some of these companies either trying to fully build out their own internal MRO capabilities or working with partners. So two examples of that. One is Beta, which says that a lot of its early customers are large operators that have their own maintenance organizations.

                                   So in those types of cases, they're more focused on enabling those customers own MRO staff to maintain the ALIA eVTOL, but they're also building out some internal capabilities and working with different maintenance providers and that sort of thing. Whereas Joby seems to want to do a lot of this MRO development in-house themselves. So sort of the model that they talked about with me is that maintenance operations will differ based on location. But there could be centralized MRO locations that aircraft sleep overnight as they said, since they'll have really high utilization and will require some level of maintenance every night. But then more heavy maintenance could likely take place at their main base in Marina, California, and they'll also have mobile maintenance fans to travel around to different vertical ports. But one of the, I think more contentious things in this area was the technician training.

                                   So the eVTOL companies seem to really want to handle that all themselves. But over the last few years, I've heard from a lot of different part 147 aviation maintenance schools in the US said they want to be able to prepare their students to work in that emerging industry and they're not having a lot of luck getting the eVTOL companies to work with them. I think a lot of that boils down to the developers wanting to control their intellectual property. But I thought it was interesting. One of my sources at a school in Minnesota suggested that eVTOL developers should be working with schools to sort of train the gap rather than having to start from scratch to train technicians, particularly since the graduates of schools like this have an aviation safety mindset. So they have a lot of sort of skills and background that I think would be important for a new industry like this. James wanted to chime in on the GSE portion.

James Pozzi:                 Yeah, absolutely. Over the last 10 years I've been in aviation journalism. This was only one of, I think a handful of times I've written about GSE. So it was educational as well as of course, very interesting to look at where some of the innovation is happening and how that's seeping through into the aftermarket. So yeah, ground support equipment, there is a lot of innovation taking place, although the consensus seem to be, it hasn't been particularly fast moving over 10 years. It's been quite a gradual pace of change. As Lindsay mentioned really, the drivers like in other segments is sustainability has played a big role in this. And also in the case of GSE efficiencies too, a lot of companies have been developing or working to develop tools and equipment to help make the tasks more efficient, so to speak. So yeah, and of course less labor-intensive as well along the way.

                                   So typically where have we seen this? In tools powered manually or by pneumatics has been where a lot of the changes happen. An example of this is an aircraft tripod jack that was cited. So historically these systems were operated pneumatically or manually, but due to customer requests, they have been asking for more electric tripods, which people say has already shown results for improved safety, greater efficiency, and also ease of use. Okay, we're in increasingly digital era, which comes with many benefits, but there's a big focus as well on ease of use and making it user-friendly so to speak. And yeah, that digital environment is also playing a massive role in this, and these tools are being developed to better fit in this environment. And what are we seeing in terms of this innovation? So think more lightweight materials. There's a big focus on better mobility and even an integration of sensors and digital tracking systems into the tools as well.

                                   And I guess how this is going to work in the aftermarket. Well, we're seeing more smart maintenance as it's called. So a good quote I got from Vincent Collier who is engineering director at Didion Aerospace. Of course in Toulouse, one of the industry's biggest tooling and GSE specialists. He told me that electrification is reshaping how we think about tool design. What used to be powered by air is now quietly and cleanly driven by electricity. And Vincent told me how this will impact maintenance. He said, "Tomorrow's maintenance tooling won't just be electric, it'll be intelligent, connected and built to think alongside the operator." So that obviously points to more automation, that's expected to take place beyond just the electrification of these tools as well. And he also, to conclude his quote, he says, "The next technological leap will involve the integration of things like robotics into maintenance operations."

                                   And obviously that'll work concurrently with tooling. Quite excitedly for this segment, the consensus seems to be that the major disruption is still to come. What we've seen over the last 10 years has been progress, but it hasn't necessarily been disruptive as such. But that is on the way and things are being developed. And just a last point, not to give too much away, of course Lindsay obviously spoke about the training and the skill side of things before. This is going to have a big impact on how technicians and engineers are trained in relation to tooling and GSE and the training processes are changing to fit with this new environment. So yeah, just a little taster there, but there's plenty more you can read about this really fascinating topic in inside MRO. It certainly is an interesting one in terms of what's being developed and what changes we're seeing presently in the market in GSE.

Lee Ann Shay:               Well, thank you both for that and thank you for writing that story along with Graham. It's just such a good comprehensive feature and especially on the AEM side is some of those vehicles near certification this year, next year, June 2027. It's really something for training and maintenance and airports to think about from an infrastructure standpoint. Lindsay, you also wrote a very comprehensive story about the barriers that some A&P students in the US are facing as they try to take their oral and written tests. Reading this, I thought it was a really balanced piece of journalism, but I was alarmed the further I got into reading this story. Should people be alarmed or am I overreacting?

Lindsay Bjerreg...:         I don't know if alarmed is the right word, but sort of the overall context of this. We're already short of technicians. We know there's a workforce shortage. And so any barriers to slow down or impede the progress of trying to certify new technicians is a problem for the industry. So there were two main hurdles that the story really looks at when it comes to testing the hurdle to the written testing that these students take before they go on and take their oral and their practical exams. It's handled by one company that the schools now say have a monopoly over it. And then on the oral and practical side, these tests are basically proctored by what's called a designated mechanic examiner, which is somebody that the FAA approves to essentially give those tests to people. And there is a big shortage of that in the US. So the Aviation Technician Education Council says that we need nearly 30% more DMEs designated mechanic examiners to accommodate all of the part 147 school graduates in the US.

                                   The people who are DMEs right now, it seems like most of them are either retired mechanics or people that essentially try to do it as a side hustle. It takes up a lot of time, energy, and resources to do this. So some of the sources that I spoke to said that these oral and these practical exams are basically two day tests that can last anywhere from 16 to 20 hours. DME schedules book up really far in advance. So applicants to take those tests are having to wait months, even up to half a year to get a slot to take those tests and get certified. And I also heard from schools that they've been trying to get more DMEs certified by their local FAA inspectors, but those requests are not being approved. And so in some areas of the US students are having to drive many hours, or even in the case of Hawaii, having to fly to the mainland to test with their nearest DME.

                                   So that obviously is a problem. But before they even do the oral and practical exams, they have to do their written exams. And so these are done by this company called PSI that has a sole source contract now with the FAA. There used to be multiple companies that had this contract and that did it. And so when I stumbled on this story, it sort of became clear to me that the different part 147 schools were basically dying to complain about the situation. A lot of them had the similar complaints about this company anywhere ranging from shortage of available testing slots to increased prices for tests, a bumpy system that they say has frequent outages, and then schools claiming that this company PSI is intentionally basically trying to box out more independent testing centers. So basically PSI, they either run all the testing centers for these tests themselves, or they approve the independent testing centers for written FAA testing. Those are typically run at schools or at military bases.

                                   I've heard that there's a testing desert situation where there might be a lot of testing centers around certain big cities in different states, but different schools that might be in less populated areas have that same problem where students are having to drive really long distances to go get their tests done. There's not enough slots for tests because basically students are all trying to test at the same time, like right before their graduation and they're not getting in to do that. And you can learn more about it in the article. I don't want to scoop myself too much here, but the bottom line is that the part 147 schools in the US think the situation is actively impeding how many graduates are able to get their airframe and power plant certifications. That can have a knock-on effect for the workforce pipeline. And so the schools really want to sort of retake control over this testing because, one, they feel they understand the subject matter better. And two, they said that they understand the need for testing better than PSI and the FAA due.

Lee Ann Shay:               Kind of switching gears, James, you interviewed Ryanair, head of heavy maintenance, Adam Hale, and that interview runs in this issue. Ryanairs has so many interesting things going on. They're building their fleet, they're doing a big chunk of their maintenance in-house, I think as he said, wrote 75% and they're thinking about opening an engine MRO shop. Given all that plus other things that he said, what are your thoughts?

James Pozzi:                 Yeah, a couple of weeks ago in the Prague of course I sat down with Adam for a bit of time. We spoke on a one-to-one about its MRO plans going forward, some typically candid insights really. He gave a lot of interesting perspectives on the aftermarket, but also as mentioned, very candid about Ryanairs fleet and its future plans to grow maintenance alongside this. So Ryanair have a lot of orders coming in, of course, to its fleet, the 737 MAX-10, which they signed an order for a few years ago. That's 150 aircraft ordered and 150 options as well. Of course it's still got a big, predominantly at the moment, 737 classic fleet with the 800s. And obviously they've taken a lot or the majority already of their 737 MAX 8-200s as well. There's still a few more of those to come in over time and including all the aircraft.

                                   Of course, there's 20 odds, A320s, which are operated by a Lauda Europe, which has a wet lease agreement in place with Ryanair. And of course for Learjets, which are also being replaced by Bombardier Challenger 3500s, and therefore generally transporting engineers and parts. So yeah, as I said, alongside that fleet growth in the next eight or nine years, it's going to be between 800 to 900 aircrafts. So a huge amount. And obviously don't forget there's retirement's factored into that, although a formal plan is not quite in place for that yet, Adam revealed. So yeah, it's Hemorrhoid network. Let's start with the base maintenance. It's obviously 75% of aircraft checks around that are done internally and the remaining 25% is externally through partners. They have a lot of bases around Europe for those partners and beyond. Of course, Joramco in Amman, that's 10 lines of maintenance coming up and they want to grow that even more.

                                   That's been working very well. Adam spoke highly of Caerdav, of course in Cardiff. He said they've become a good partner, Aeroplex in Hungary. And of course a more recent one, myTECHNIC in Istanbul is a new recent partner. So kind of more of these, he called them Joramco style partnerships, I think what they're looking for. Obviously in their own base, their internal network, they have bases of course for heavy maintenance in Shannon Island, Frankfurt, Germany, Seville in Spain, Wroclaw in Poland, Kaunas in Lithuania, and Prestwick of course, which is near Glasgow in Scotland. So yeah, that network has kind been ramping up and they've got a lot of lines there, but they're always looking for more by the sounds of it, given that the pace of that fleet expansion is going to happen fast. But as you mentioned, Lee Ann, engines, that was the real talking point.

                                   I think that caused a bit of a stir when they announced it in early February of this year. So what we know at the moment, and this is going up to the two weeks since I spoke to Adam in mid-May two locations are due to be announced soon. We still don't know where they are. Obviously a lot of countries were floated around in our discussion. You can see who they are in the article, mostly Europe, but there's an interesting one in North Africa as well that that was touted potentially. Ryanair obviously have already operate flights to these countries. There's pre-existing links and of course Ryanair are an attractive proposition for these countries and their governments to bring them into the country and create these jobs between four to 500 people working at each site. And there'll be two overhaul shops doing up to 200 overhauls per year eventually.

                                   But it'll be a gradual process, of course, where they ramp up. And this will obviously be surfacing the Ryanair engine fleet. I think the leadership, it's well known, wants to have greater control over this because it has been problematic in some of the engine programs of course, that we know very well and we've spoken a lot about on this podcast. Yeah, very rarely that an airline takes engine MRO in-house in this day and age, but I guess Ryanair, they have the capital to do so. They have the bandwidth as well. And importantly as well, the workforce because they're talking about this big job creation, but Adam had some very interesting insights about the volume of the people they're bringing into the company and how they're doing this. And they've generally managed to have fared better and doing so rather than being challenged to high degrees in doing this. So some candid insights there about that topic as well. And you can read more about the engine shop, the workforce issues, and the future fleet growth plans in inside MRO.

Lee Ann Shay:               Thank you, James. And before we leave, there's another feature I really wanted to plug. Graham Warwick also wrote our engineering article, and this one's on hydrogen fuel cell development. This feature does an excellent job explaining hydrogen's development for aviation, including why aviation is evolving automotive grade, low temperature, proton exchange membranes into higher performing pens for aircraft. ZeroAvia is one of the companies pursuing this that Graham mentions in that feature. Hey, we've run out of time, but Lindsay and James, thank you so much for your insights. That's a wrap for this podcast. Don't miss the next episode by subscribing to the MRO podcast wherever you listen to them. And one last request, please consider leaving us a star rating or writing a review. Thank you so much.