ABOUT AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING

Training for the Aircraft Maintenance Engineering program at SOA has been approved by the DGCA. The license Examination is conducted by the DGCA. The duration of training at the institute is 2 years, phased over four semesters. This 2 Years is having 2400 Hrs of planned training out of which 2050 Hrs will be in class rooms and labs, 350 will in actual maintenance environment, i.e at MRO. School of Aeronautics has tied up with Air India, which is India’s largest MRO. Total Aviation Experience requirement to obtain B2 license is as per CAR 66. For obtaining Aircraft Maintenance Engineering License in B2 category students will have to clear 10 module examinations of DGCA,

Different types of Instruments, Radio and Aircraft electrical equipment in our workshop give an opportunity to the student to study various theories of Avionics of an aircraft. The reference books, periodicals, aviation magazines and text books in our library keep the student abreast of knowledge in the aviation field. In short SOA provide all facilities to make a student a successful Aircraft Maintenance Engineer.

Basically, the course is meant for preparing the students for getting Aircraft Maintenance Engineer License in various categories which is issued by DGCA after the student has passed module examination conducted by DGCA.

Assessment for the Students of Aircraft Maintenance Engineering

It is mandatory for the students of Aircraft Maintenance Engineering to put in a minimum of 90% of attendance in every semester to appear for the examination for promotion to the next semester. The minimum pass marks in any test or examination is 75% and pass marks for Re-Examination is also 75%. The students falling short of attendance are not promoted to next semester and may be detained. The students are expected to pass all the subjects of a semester. Candidates may be promoted to the next semester after completion of previous semester (s). Candidates who are not successful in passing some subjects of a semester may be re-examined for those subject(s) until they pass the complete semester. For such students the application must be forwarded for DGCA Aircraft Maintenance Engineering license examination only after he has successfully passed the required semester examinations. They will be given extra coaching and will have to pay additional fees and other charges for the full semester.

Eligibility for Admission into Aircraft Maintenance Engineering

The minimum qualification for admission to the course is a pass in

• 10+2 pre-degree/intermediate or equivalent with Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry / B.Sc with Maths, Physics & Chemistry.
• Diploma in Engineering.

Medical Standards For Admission Into Aircraft Maintenance Engineering

The student will have to produce a medical certificate from a registered medical practitioner with minimum MBBS qualification to certify that he / she has no physical disability and the color vision is normal.

General Details About Aircraft Maintenance Engineering

If we look back a decade or two, we will notice that avionics was just limited to a few black boxes for communication and navigation installed on aircraft. But with passage of time avionics in field of aviation has undergone a tremendous change. Integrated Digital Avionics as it is, referred to, has blossomed into a third dimension for aerospace vehicles, first two being airframe and engines. Any new advancement in electronics has tempted the A/C designer to add a new dimension to this avionics package. As a result, the avionics of today encompasses the aircraft flight control (fly by wire) also engine control (fully automatic Digital Electronics control), the integrated flight and fire control, cockpit displays and even utilities management in addition to communication and integrated navigation. Multiple roles are also being carried out in a truly integrated manner through the use of common digital format for data. This enables avionic systems to share data from a bank of common sensors and data links has permitted additional redundancies in hardware resulting to higher reliability and higher flight safety. Thus multi role aircraft are available with more reliability due to increased role of electronics. This has led to increase in cost of maintenance and manufacture of A/C. We know that avionics of today share 40% of the cost of military A/C and almost 55% of airforce budget.

The major escalation in cost of present day A/C is due to more advanced and developed avionics. Because of advancement in electronics/Avionics we have multi role a/c these days. Even present day helicopter carry a more modern fire control radar and digital avionic flight management computers. Some of Present day A/C have advanced auto pilots and common digital automatic flight control and ground proximity warning system (GPWS). The stress these days is vastly on avionics updates which improves performance. Head up display is a new growth area being used on light transport a/c (LTA). The market of avionic is on the increase both in military and civil sectors. The new trend of increased role for avionic is definite to result in increase share of avionics in the local market also.

The training and educational institutes are also updating their course coverage accordingly to deliver the trained manpower and handling and maintenance of developed avionic system in field of aviation. To fulfill the need of trained manpower in the field of avionics the endeavour of this institute is to update the training programme to generate reasonable level of self sufficiency in the field of Avionics. Presently there are about 60 institutes approved by DGCA to train man power for acquiring AME licence, out of these only 20 are approved to train AME’s for avionic systems and ours happens to be the first institute in Delhi Region approved by DGCA for Avionic System.

Total number of students coming out from these 60 institutes which are training the students in the field of Airframe and Engines, are approximately 3600 per year, where as number of students coming out with avionics training are only around 1000 per year and so they are in great demand in the industry due to short supply and more development of avionics industry.