United Airlines is launching a program to attract U.S. Army reservists and students from three maintenance schools to give them a direct pathway to technician jobs at the airline.
The Calibrate Technician Pathway program, unveiling Oct. 24, plans to recruit 300 students annually. In the first phase of this initiative, United is partnering with the U.S. Army Reserve’s Aviation Command Unit; the National Aviation Academy in Clearwater, Florida; the Aviation Institute of Maintenance, which has 15 campuses in the U.S.; and the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, which has four campuses.
Once United accepts students into the Calibrate Technician Pathway program, they will be required to “maintain a high GPS and a strong attendance record to remain in the hiring pool after graduation,” says Scott Ferris, United Airline’s Calibrate director.
The program should help reservists obtain their airframe and powerplant (A&P) license and transition out of the military, says Joe Byers, senior manager of Calibrate Strategic Partnership. Although many have the maintenance experience required, they do not have the FAA license. But “with our partnerships with these tech schools,” Byers says, they can get connected to take an A&P test prep course, which should increase their test success. The U.S. Army Reserves’ Aviation Command Unit has 4,400 soldiers and about 600 civilians in 12 states, many of whom work near where United aircraft are maintained.
Reservists and students upon graduation will interview at the airline’s Tech Ops recruiting center in Houston “after completing all necessary certifications on their own,” he says. “Participants will have priority hiring consideration,” he adds. “They basically go to the top of the list.”
The next phase of the Calibrate Technician Pathway Program could include “United Express carriers and [MRO] partners,” Ferris says. United is just starting to talk with those entities. “We want to set up these programs,” especially for regional partners and MROs, “because now it will help the students have a pathway” to the airline, Ferris adds.
“This would help the MROs and Express carriers attract top talent, and it allows the talent to stay there and develop, instead of leaving in six months,” Ferris says. Forging such a partnership should help the express carriers and MROs “have sort of a forecasted attrition rate” instead of randomly loosing people, so it is a win-win for all partners and the students.
Ferris says United has hired more than 3,200 technicians in the past 18 months and plans to hire several thousand more by the end of 2026 in support of the airline’s United Next fleet growth plan, which calls for the airline to add about 800 new aircraft between 2023-32.
The Calibrate Technician Pathway Program is in addition to the airline’s Calibrate Apprenticeship program, which also helps develop a pathway for maintenance technicians. This full-time, paid apprenticeship program, which includes 60 students so far, trains technicians to work in aircraft maintenance, ground service equipment or facilities maintenance. It is done in conjunction with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the FAA. The airline will start accepting external applications in 2024.
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