Vital Recruitment Efforts in Aircraft Maintenance

Iberia Maintenance is celebrating its 20th anniversary as an EASA 147 centre, and currently has more than 2,500 Aviation Maintenance Technicians (AMTs) in its workforce in different production areas. The variety of areas include: basic training 147, training cycles in aeromechanics, avionics, assembly of structures, machining, composite materials, verification, painting and electromechanics, among many others. Iberia Maintenance is the only training centre in Spain approved to provide training 147 on the Airbus 320 and 350 families, including the A320, A330, A340 and A350 fleets in all their engines.

In addition, over the last year, AMTs workforce has registered one of the most accelerated evolutions in recent months with the incorporation of nearly 450 professionals to the team.

The relevance of AMTs will be even more prominent in the future, given that the world fleet is expected to increase by 28% in the next 10 years, which will lead to an increase in demand of around 33,000 new professionals per year.

This trend also speaks to Iberia's commitment to vocational training programmes, as more than 30% of recruits are students who have completed their training at Iberia Maintenance.

However, there is a challenging context, especially in terms of workforce renewal and the introduction of women in this industry. In total, in Spain, 33.7% of students enrolled in vocational training and, of these, 4.8% chose the vehicle maintenance branch, with only 0.4% being women.

In addition to being an EASA 147-approved centre, the Iberia Maintenance Training Centre provides and coordinates technical training in the different maintenance business areas: engines, aircraft and components. It offers these services to third-party customers.

The centre has classroom simulation devices under Airbus licence, making it one of the few centres in Europe to have this technology. It also offers access to a full aircraft simulator for taxiing courses, as well as access to the aircraft Iberia Maintenance overhauls at its facilities for practice. Since approval in 2004, more than 10,000 students have been trained at the Iberia Training Centre. Currently, the centre has 16 instructors with the 147s approval.

More than 50 instructors, support staff and content developers work in all the aforementioned areas. In 2023, more than 150,000 training hours/student were delivered in the different modalities.

"During these two decades, we have achieved our goal: to support the evolution of the MRO sector and facilitate the professional development of people through highly qualified training," says Ignacio de la Iglesia, manager of the Iberia Maintenance Training Centre. "One of the strengths of our training centre is that it is integrated into Iberia Maintenance's production units, which makes it easier to have the best instructors with extensive real-world experience, and employees who wish to continue studying can do so without having to leave their place of work," said de la Iglesia.