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Mr. Ramesh Lutchmedial, Director General of the TTCAA, delivered the certificate to Mrs. Nalini Chanderban, Executive Manager in charge of Quality and Administration at the AWHWAES.
That Certificate of Approval means that graduates of the AWHWAES will receive a T&T aircraft maintenance engineer’s license, and those engineers can now certify maintenance works and can issue certificates of maintenance on all T&T registered aircraft, including those operated by Caribbean Airlines Limited (CAL).
Mr. Lutchmedial, who is also Chairman of the Caribbean Aviation Safety and Security Oversight System (CASSOS), an official institution of CARICOM, stressed that with the free movement of aviation professionals throughout the region, the T&T certificate of approval offers tremendous opportunities for young people who choose to be part of the aviation sector via the AWHWAES.
The AWHWAES, notably, is the only aircraft maintenance training institution in the Caribbean.
In a continuation of the first article released last week, information from the school says that its main training programme, the ab-initio training programme, is designed specifically for persons with proven academic ability, even though they have no previous aviation maintenance experience.
The ab-initio programme is a full-time programme which enables trainees to be prepared for the Aircraft Maintenance Engineer’s Licence (AMEL) without Type Rating (LWTR). In the ab-initio, the trainees are exposed to theoretical and practical training over a three-and-a-quarter-year period, in order to ensure their readiness for the Aircraft Maintenance Engineer’s Licence examinations.
The complement of instructors includes those with university degrees and years of experience in management, education, electrical engineering, mathematics and medicine. All aeronautical engineering instructors are currently involved in the day-to-day maintenance of aircraft at all maintenance organizations in Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, and Jamaica. Trainees are trained in basic workshop skills, and applicants must be at least 16 years old.
Students gain practical experience by exposure to aircraft maintenance at various hangar facilities. This is referred to as ‘practical attachment’, and is monitored by maintenance supervisors.
Work done is recorded in a logbook as on-the-job training (OJT).
The school has disclosed that the minimum qualification requirements for those in the ab-initio trainee programme are 3 subjects CXC/GCE, namely Mathematics, English and any science subject (Grades III/C and above), or a recognized technical qualification in the discipline of interest. This includes a Diploma in Engineering and/or a City & Guilds Ordinary Technician Diploma.
They must complete the school’s aptitude test, and score the minimum marks in mechanical comprehension, mathematics, English and mental dexterity.
The mental dexterity test analyses and determines the applicant’s suitability and adaptability to the learning process.
The ab-initio programme’s fees are payable in installments — yearly, quarterly, monthly, or as otherwise agreed upon — and cover all tuition and work attachment necessary to complete the course, plus the cost of the accident and illness insurance plan.
The ab-initio programme, the school says, is broken down into three parts, namely: theoretical training, skills training, and practical training on aircraft.
Within the theoretical training component, modules are taught in the classrooms, and a certificate of achievement is issued upon successful completion of each module.
Skills training is conducted in the Ogle-based George Loy Workshop of the school.
The skills training involves approximately two hundred (200) hours of practical training at the workshop.
Part three, practical training on aircraft, consists of base maintenance, line maintenance, and administrative procedures related to aircraft maintenance.
The minimum practical training hours required to complete this component of the training are two thousand (2000).
Students are exposed to maintenance at various attachment agencies. These include attachment at Caribbean Aviation Maintenance Services Ltd. (CAMS) at the Ogle International Airport.
Second – and third-year students also undergo attachment at the Caribbean Airlines Limited (CAL) at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) Timehri.
Graduate students are also attached to the Piarco base of the Caribbean Airlines Ltd., and assist in making A and C checks on the Boeing 737-800 and the Bombardier Dash 8-300 aircraft.
Additionally, the AWHWAES is delivering the ab-initio programme in the form of an apprenticeship programme for CAL’s new engineering employees.
This training commenced on September 18, 2009, and is of four years’ duration. Nineteen students are enrolled.
The AWHWAES encourages the following attributes from all its students: a sense of mission; ability to plan strategically, high self-confidence and self-worth, a positive work environment made by oneself; decisiveness in the face of opportunity; a thirst for knowledge; foresight to anticipate difficulties and opportunities, and thinking big.
(This is the final installment in a series of articles on the AWHWAES published over the past week weeks in the Sunday Chronicle)
