How Industry Stakeholders are Getting Girls Interested in MRO Careers

United Airlines held 14 GIAD events worldwide this year, where they hosted more than 500 girls at locations in the U.S., France, the Netherlands, Italy and the UK. According to the airline, attendees were exposed to “pretty much every role you can think of in aviation,” including interaction with female pilots, ramp workers, technicians and cybersecurity professionals.

Each event location had custom programming, which varied depending on its workers, volunteers and nonprofit and local school partners. United says it works with nonprofit partners year-round to promote girls in aviation, so the cause is “not just about this one day of the year” for them.

Each event location had custom programming, which varied depending on its workers, volunteers and nonprofit and local school partners. United says it works with nonprofit partners year-round to promote girls in aviation, so the cause is “not just about this one day of the year” for them.

Led by Laura Spolar, who is a member of United’s Chix Fix team and an aircraft maintenance supervisor for the airline’s Orlando Technical Operations, WAI’s Central Florida Chapter works to present a unique experience for GIAD attendees every year. Spolar says the chapter places a lot of focus on nontraditional aviation careers, such as maintenance, airport firefighting and airport wildlife control.

This year, two Chix Fix team members held a number of hands-on activities with attendees to teach them maintenance concepts such as safety wiring and riveting. The event also featured demos from NASA, Civil Air Patrol and a local high school robotics team. Girls learned about visual navigation through a class on VFR Sectional Chart as well as first aid and flight attendant job duties.

Kent State University (KSU), in conjunction with WAI’s KSU Flying Black Squirrels Chapter, also focused on non-traditional aviation segments such as maintenance and robotics. The college has academic programs related to robotics and mechatronics, and it is currently working to build an aircraft maintenance program, so its GIAD events aimed to get attendees interested in these topics.

KSU had 120 registrants during its first GIAD event in 2017 and had close to the same number of attendees this year. Attendees, generally between the 4th and 12th grade level, learned about aviation concepts such as lift, thrust and drag in addition to fun activities where kids could dress like pilots or take pictures with Instagram frames. The school has curriculum related to air traffic control, aviation management, aerospace engineering and flight technology, so these areas were all incorporated into the GIAD programming.

According to a representative for KSU, its WAI student chapter participates in and hosts a lot of events for the college year-round to incentivize female students to become interested in STEM topics. The school is hoping to have its aircraft maintenance program completed within a year and is currently fundraising to build a new maintenance hangar.

In addition to several events hosted in the U.S., Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) is innovating by providing a virtual GIAD event to girls worldwide who may not be able to physically attend an event. The school developed a free, self-paced online course called Aviation is Your Future to teach children about aviation topics such as basic parts of an aircraft, the four forces of flight, helicopters and space. Although it was developed to celebrate GIAD, the online course is open to boys as well and ERAU’s target audience for it is children aged 8-12. The course takes approximately six hours to complete and participants who finish will receive a certificate of completion. ERAU opened the online course last week and it already has more than 100 students enrolled. The online course period will end on Nov. 3.

The Aviation is Your Future online course will also be leveraged within GIAD efforts in South Africa. ERAU began a partnership with the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa last year at a WAI breakfast sponsored by Girls Fly Programme Africa. Together, the schools chose McAuley House school in Johannesburg to pilot GIAD in South Africa. This year’s event will feature a facilitated version of the ERAU online course, which will be hosted on three consecutive Saturdays in October by industry mentors. GIAD South Africa also held an Aviation Fun Day on Oct. 4 for 248 students from McAuley House where speakers from various areas of the aviation industry engaged with them through activities such as a drone demonstration.

Partnering with the AWAM (Association for Women in Aviation Maintenance) Gulf Coast Chapter 22 and several local aviation companies, Airbus is sponsoring a GIAD event this year in Mobile, Alabama for 40 girls. The event, which takes place on Oct. 12, will focus on a variety of aviation roles such as maintenance, manufacturing, piloting and engineering. Activities will include putting together three-ring notebooks with sheet metal to teach girls about riveting, learning about the process of manufacturing an airplane with an aircraft model and a snap circuits activity to teach them about avionics. In addition, the event will feature a drone to teach girls about flight dynamics.

This is Airbus’ third year supporting GIAD in Alabama. To further inspire children and provide career awareness about jobs in aviation, Airbus has partnered with the state of Alabama to construct a 15,000 ft.2 aviation education center at the Mobile Aeroplex. Airbus plans to open the facility in Q2 2020.

Meanwhile, the company rolled out a program called FlightPath9 this year to give high school students the opportunity to start career training for jobs at Airbus while still in school. FlightPath9 is a nine-month, 200-hr. program that students attend after school, which features instructors and guest speakers from both Airbus and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Upon completion, students will receive 19 industry certifications and can enter Airbus’ Fast Track program, where they then become Airbus employees and receive on-the-job training over the course of the 8-12 week program.