business backgrounder | industry
Flying High
While the race to ensure Boeing builds its 777X in
Washington has dominated the news, another program is
quietly training the next generation of technicians to repair
and maintain planes — regardless of who built them.
Brian Mittge
Air Washington is a consortium of community and technical colleges that use a federal grant
to train workers for a crucial and lucrative niche: aircraft maintenance and repair, along with
high-tech composite fabrication.
The Puget Sound region is home to massive factories that build
airplanes and parts, but another facet of the state’s aerospace
economy thrives on what happens long after the plane has been
built and delivered.
Thanks to a federal grant and some smart coordination on
both sides of the Cascade Mountains, thousands of young workers are learning the highly specialized skills needed to maintain
and repair the world’s air fleets. These high-tech, high-paying,
highly skilled jobs require targeted training. That’s where the
cross-state consortium comes into play.
The Air Washington program is a collaboration of business,
labor and government. It has provided statewide curriculum
development and training for more than 2,400 people to become,
in the consortium’s words, “the most skilled aerospace workforce in the world.”
Air Washington is funded by a $20 million, three-year federal grant to increase the state’s
workforce capacity in such fields
as electronics, avionics, machining, assembly and maintenance.
Air Washington training isn’t
limited to existing technologies — they prepare workers for
technologies of the future, from
unmanned aerial drones to the
specialized composites used to
make light-weight and sturdy
parts for aircraft, electric cars,
ships and more.
Carol Weigand is the Air
Washington program manager,
overseeing its connection with
11 community and technical colleges across the state. Based in
Spokane, she sees firsthand the
local examples of how the statewide initiative has helped increase
capacity for aerospace programs.
“Providing our local industry
with a skilled workforce is vital
to Spokane’s local economy,” she
said, and statewide “the capacity
The Air Washington Program pays for training throughout the state, creating the next generation of skilled
aerospace workers.
44 association of washington business