A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in 2007, Curt came to&nbsp;the publication&nbsp;from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;sister publication&nbsp;Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s&nbsp; Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with&nbsp;Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.

Business Aviation Services Editor

Curt Epstein

Global aviation training provider CAE has launched Ready for Work, a computer-based initiative aimed at getting aircraft maintenance technicians up to speed faster, at a time when the industry is facing skilled labor shortages. It focuses on that two-year period between when a technician earns their airframe and powerplant certificate and their start of initial aircraft type training.&nbsp;
That period typically consists of learning through on-the-job training, according to David Bienvenu,&nbsp;general manager of CAE’s maintenance training division.&nbsp;
“Historically, you had essentially nine experienced technicians for every one new technician in the building, so there’s a lot of on-the-job training, a lot of coaching to get the new young technician up to speed and get proficient on the aircraft,” he told AIN at NBAA-BACE. “Fast forward to today, with some large demographic changes and a huge increase in business aviation, you end up in a situation where you have more like seven new technicians for three experienced technicians. This creates a lot of pressure on those first two years of getting those new techs ramped up.”
With the Ready for Work program, CAE will provide online learning modules to increase newly-hired technicians’ knowledge base, while simultaneously reducing demand on veteran mechanics.
“You're diminishing the pressure on the on-the-job training, freeing up your new techs to keep billing on existing aircraft, but also you're investing straight off the bat in these new hires, which improves your retention rate as people are motivated when employers invest in them on training,” said Bienvenu.
He noted on-the-job training is not going away. “[Ready for Work] is meant to support on-the-job training, so it’s to support them with a solid structure, then connect with their veteran technician that can bring them along to show them also the cultural aspects of the employer. They just are better prepared, so they’re not ramping them up on some of the basics. They’re going immediately into some of the more advanced elements.”
CAE noted the next generation of technicians is more comfortable with computer-based learning. “They went to school in a virtual format,” Bienvenu explained. “That is a learning divide that we have a challenge with every day as we teach some of our initial type courses, but it’s something where we’ve decided to really specialize the newer types of training to cater to that newer generation coming on board.”
Students in the Ready for Work program will have their progress monitored by a supervisor who can chart their progression, as well as their rate of absorbing the material, based on online milestone assessments.&nbsp;
The platform is available in a variety of configurations ranging from à la carte to a full package. CAE has 10 courses available, and another 30 under development will be introduced over the next six to eight months.

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