Anyone in our industry who has not heard that the Chinese aviation industry is growing exponentially must be living on Mars. The Civil Aviation Administration of China predicts that up to 650 aircraft will be delivered to Chinese carriers in the next five years and that 240,000 more trained staff will be needed in the next 20 years to maintain the expanding fleets.

To put this in context, 240,000 is about the population of Kakogawa, Japan; Aachen, Germany; Norfolk, Va.; or the entire country of Belize.

Then there's the third-party outsourcing factor: MROs in China maintain and overhaul more and more aircraft from other countries. For instance, Ameco Beijing completes United Airlines' Boeing 777 heavy maintenance.

And don't forget that Chinese MROs are expanding their capabilities to include major projects like passenger-to-freighter conversions. A Boeing 767 conversion can take 150,000 man-hours, which is no small feat.

"With the growing demand for air travel within and out of China, and the current pool of 18,000 qualified aircraft maintenance workers available in the industry, it seems that there would be a shortage in qualified MRO staff unless investment in training is increased," said Tay Kok Khiang, president of Singapore Technologies Aerospace.

Thankfully, 650 new aircraft do not show up overnight, but 240,000 technicians cannot be trained overnight either. As Joey Lo, commercial director at GAMECO said, "I can train my grandma to be an engineer, but it takes time."

Training New Staff

Several MROs and their affiliates have inhouse training programs in China.

Take Air China, for example, which plans to double its fleet between 2005 and 2010, to about 300 aircraft. Air China has its own maintenance division, called Air China Technics, and it participates with Lufthansa German Airlines in the Ameco Beijing joint venture.

Fleet growth is prompting Air China Technics' maintenance workload to increase faster than its pool of technicians, according to Li Kai, planning manager for Air China Technics, the airline's maintenance division.

"If we keep our present operating model, we will need about 700 new technicians" at Air China Technics, and Ameco Beijing, which provides aircraft, engine and component overhaul and maintenance for partner Air China and a host of other Chinese and foreign carriers, will need more than 1,000 additional employees, said Li. Put simply, a shortage of qualified personnel could endanger future growth, said Hans Schmitz, general manager at Ameco.

Enter Ameco Aviation College (run by Ameco Beijing), which trains customers from within and outside Ameco-affiliated companies. For instance, Lufthansa Technik Shenzhen, a structural component overhaul facility in southern China, sends personnel to AAC for basic skills training.

Ameco Aviation College is one of the few technical training facilities for maintenance education in China. In July, AAC became the first CCAR Part 147 certified training organization in China, according to Ameco. It also is the only training business in China that appears on the European Aviation Safety Agency's list of non-bilateral EASA Part 147 approved organizations.

To accommodate increased demand from internal and external customers, as well as the growing need to train people on new technologies and advanced materials, the aviation college plans to open another building in 2008.

"Secondly, we are enhancing our cooperation with aviation-related universities in China in a way that the universities provide theoretical skills, whereas the practical training will be provided by Ameco. Thus, AAC will have many more graduates every year," said Gao Hong Jie, head of Ameco Aviation College.

Ameco Aviation College currently maximizes its capacity of 350 students, 240 in basic training and 110 in type and specialized training, but the expansion should boost that to 500 students. The school graduates about 110 students per year, up from 60 a few years ago. It targets 200 graduates per year.

He said Chinese universities graduate high numbers of students each year, but to work in aviation maintenance, they need additional training.

Ameco Beijing also started contacting "several technical secondary schools and vocational schools both in Beijing and other places ... so that the outstanding students we have selected will be sent to Ameco Beijing after graduation," said Zhu Jun Ziu, subdivision manager of Ameco Beijing's personnel division. "Vested with our own training organization, Ameco Aviation College, Ameco Beijing has an advantage that other maintenance organizations haven't," she added.

MTU Zhuhai, a joint venture between MTU Aero Engines and China Southern Airlines, initially sent mechanics and engineers to Germany for six to eight months of training. Several mechanics left after a couple of years, despite signing a training agreement committing them to staying three to four years.

"We learned our lesson and set up our own training here" in 2002, said Walter Strakosch, president and CEO of MTU Zhuhai. Each year, 20 to 30 apprentices finish basic training and join MTU for on-the-job experience as part of the company's dual training principle. A local industrial school teaches apprentices theoretical knowledge, and MTU teaches the on-site MRO portion, said Strakosch. "We need 30 to 50 per year, but we have other sources," such as a CAAC college in Guangzhou.

Strakosch said recruiting people from the local Zhuhai area, and keeping them close to their families, helps retention. Besides, recruiting and training people from the local area costs less than sending them to Europe for training, he added.

Because the training program takes about three years, last year was the first year MTU Zhuhai harvested its own batch of graduates.

Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co. (HAECO) also believes its own training program aids its business case. The global technician shortage "is less of a critical issue, as our approach always has been directed toward full ab-initio training within our own in-house training school to ensure we have the correct numbers of technicians and the right quality," said Charles Bremridge, HAECO chief operating officer.

HAECO has three categories of trainees: licensed, technician and craft. "The licensed trainees are college graduates and IVE Aero (Institute of Vocational Education) graduates, while the technician trainees are from the ranks of technical college or higher diploma graduates," said Bremridge. The craft trainees usually have a Form 5 (about the 11th year in the American educational system) background, plus one year of engineer courses from a technical college, he said.

HAECO, which plans to open a second hangar by yearend, hopes to add 600 technicians by then. Taikoo (Xiamen) Aircraft Engineering Co. (TAECO), a subsidiary of HAECO, also is in expansion mode and is building a $76 million sixth hangar at Gaoqi International Airport in Xiamen. The hangar should accommodate two widebodies and be finished by the end of 2008.

TAECO, like it parent company, prefers to recruit recent graduates and train them in its own school, according to Merlin Swire, TAECO CEO. "This allows us to choose talents from a large pool and then train them from scratch in the company's cultures and practices," he said.

Last year, Swire said TAECO "recruited around 500 mechanic trainees (up from around 300 in 2004) and put them through our training school." He expects the number of mechanic trainees to be the same this year and next as the MRO prepares for business growth.

To accommodate that, "We are planning to open the new TAECO training school in the second half of 2007. Initially this will cater to 800 trainees per year, with the great majority expected to continue within HAECO and TAECO," said Bremridge.

Planned Growth

Preparing for business growth means factoring in the people equation. "We are not saying that, 'wow, tomorrow we have a lot of business. I am going to find people.' Business plans are developed a few years in advance," stressed GAMECO's Joey Lo.

He attributes part of his cautious business growth plan to being an engineer, but also to just good business sense. "It is very easy to pick a project and make it happen, but it also is very easy to make it so customers will never come back," said Lo.

GAMECO, which launched in fall 1989 and now has hangars that can accommodate four widebodies or 12 narrowbodies simultaneously, employs 2,600 people.

It completed the first Boeing 737-300 passenger-to-freighter conversion in China on June 20. China Postal Airlines operates the aircraft, which GAMECO converted in just three months. GAMECO is working on the second conversion and expects to receive a third aircraft in December.

The conversion program for 737-300 and -400 aircraft is done cooperatively with Israel Aircraft Industries. Lo said he hopes this narrowbody conversion project will "set a firm base for GAMECO to perform the cargo conversions for widebody aircraft in the near future."

Lo said he started negotiating the cargo conversion program with IAI three years ago. This gave him time to phase in 100 technicians from different departments -- including sending about one-quarter of them to offsite on-the-job training.

"Then in the meantime, after those 100 were selected for the [cargo conversion] training program, we put people in to replace their holes," he said.

Lots of preparation and advanced planning is paramount to GAMECO's success, according to Lo, who said "we are very competent to cope with growth."

GAMECO's most challenging period in its 16 years was in 2003, when the company was leading up to its move in 2004 to New Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou. This was at the time of the SARS scare, too. "The challenge in 2003 was looking 12 to 18 months in advance and saying, 'we are going to triple overnight from a small-scale operation to widebody hangars,'" said Lo. GAMECO couldn't afford to wait until the new facility opened to train the additional technicians it would need, so it prepared them in advance and was a bit overstaffed leading up to the move.

"We overcame that, and in 2004, after the new airport opened, ever since then our business has grown tremendously," he happily added.

Training as a Cost of Business

MROs face two challenges to finding people they can train. One is that new training recruits need to speak English. "It is not something you are going to find often in some remote countryside of China," said Lo.

Another challenge is China's one-child policy, which the country initiated in 1979 -- 27 years ago. Not all couples stuck to the one-child mandate, but it certainly affected the population now eligible to enter the workforce. "Now is probably the payback time," said Lo. Most families with one child probably sent him or her to a university to acquire or to improve their English language skills. Lo said single-child families often expect their only child to obtain a white collar job.

"The name aircraft engineer sounds great, but it is more or less a blue collar job," which can upset families, said Lo. "So that is challenging: how do you provide incentives, and how do you plan the career path for people?" he said. "That is our management challenge." Lo added that GAMECO has tackled the problem well, as evidenced by its 2,600 employees and intake of 80 new university college graduates this summer.

GAMECO still receives lots of applicants, which allows the MRO to be very selective, said Lo. GAMECO works closely with local universities and trains undergraduates while they are still in school.

"We do lots of induction work during the course of their studies, so they are aware that whoever comes in here is not going to be white collar. They are going to be blue collar ... but they will have a very open, very transparent career path here at GAMECO," he said.

His skilled technicians are recruited by other aviation companies, but that does not bother Lo: He just sees it as a sign his training program is good.

Training is not cheap. Ameco said "due to the high demand for training, costs increased by two-digit numbers in the last few years," said Zhu Jun Xiu.

Most people interviewed skirted the question about training costs, although Strakosch stressed it is cheaper to conduct training locally -- as opposed to sending students abroad; however, this is not always the case.

Singapore Technologies Aerospace, which opened the Shanghai Technolo- gies Aerospace Co. (STARCO) joint venture with China Eastern Airlines in February 2005, "places heavy emphasis on manpower planning" at all of its facilities, according to ST Aerospace's Tay. He said ST Aerospace has a good reputation in China, which has helped recruit qualified technicians, even from other provinces, into STARCO. Having a global MRO network where aircraft engineers can post to overseas opportunities is another benefit, said Tay.

On the flip side, "we also have the advantage of having many of our Chinese engineers and technicians who used to work in ST Aerospace's facilities in Singapore over the years," said Tay, which helps them assimilate into STARCO.

"While it is important to recruit and train staff, we find it equally important to ensure our staff are well taken care of in their career and job satisfaction. This not only motivates our staff, it also improves staff retention," said Tay.

He said about 35 percent of STARCO's staff went overseas for specialized training last year, the first year of operation for the facility. He expects training costs to continue increasing as STARCO builds its business and capabilities. "About 200 staff receive training every month, ranging from aircraft type courses, aircraft familiarization courses, safety training and on-the-job training in Shanghai and Singapore," said Tay.

He said STARCO started training staff in English mid-August to keep up with international customer expectations.

ST Aerospace obviously has big expectations for STARCO because next year it plans to expand the MRO with a five-bay hangar capable of holding three widebodies and two narrowbodies simultaneously at Shanghai's Pudong Interna- tional Airport. STARCO, which currently operates at Honggiao International Airport in Shanghai, targets generating 3 million maintenance man-hours between the two facilities once they are operating.

This means STARCO needs to grow its current staff from 516 (402 of whom are engineers, technicians/leadmen or trainees) to 1,000 engineers and technicians by 2008. Of STARCO's 516-member staff, 506 are Chinese, and 10 are expatriates.

Retaining

Besides recruiting talented local people, retaining qualified people is challenging, too. It's simply a matter of supply and demand. Air China Technics' Li Kai said, "In the first half of 2006, one engineer and six technicians resigned -- most of them left for a low-cost carrier that set up recently in China."

TAECO said it is very focused on retention. "Although we have lost some staff to fast-growing Chinese airlines and to other MROs on the Mainland and in the region, the situation is under control," said Merlin Swire.

Wolfgang Breckau, president and CEO of Lufthansa Technik Shenzhen (LTS), said that turnover in the Shenzhen region runs at 14 percent to 15 percent per year. LTS' employee turnover is around 10 percent, he said, adding that most employees who left went to other aviation companies.

Most executives interviewed for this article said the situation is under control, but it is challenging to recruit mechanics, and it is only going to get tougher.

However, "We are confident that the respective governments in the region will ensure that sufficient resources are allocated so as to ensure that demand for qualified maintenance mechanics will be addressed," said HAECO's Bremridge.

The CAAC and Rolls-Royce started a joint training facility in Tianjin in 1997 to train technicians, engineers and managers. A Rolls-Royce representative said about 6,000 technicians, engineers and managers have been trained so far, and he expects more training courses to be added based on demand. Most people who attend the courses already work for airlines, airports and regulatory authorities.

This program is part of CAAC and Rolls-Royce's Top 300 program, launched in 1996, to prepare senior management for assignments such as airline presidents and vice presidents -- and to raise Rolls-Royce's corporate profile. Between 50 and 60 executives go through the program annually.

"Other programs in China include a senior executive strategic management program, which was developed for the Central Committee of the Communist Party," said the Rolls-Royce spokesman. This program teaches corporate strategy, corporate governance and human resources strategies.

MTU Zhuhai's Walter Strakosch also said the CAAC is acting to increase the output of aviation mechanics and engineers. However, he thinks the number of qualified maintenance staff could become a growth inhibitor in the future. Just like pilot crews who come from outside China to work here, Strakosch said, "I can imagine mechanics coming from places like the Philippines and India in the future" to fill the gap.