UPDATE:I'm updating this thread as opposed to starting a new one so I don't have to go over the stuff in this thread again before asking questions, if anyone must know.


First all - wow!.... congrats Avarice - flying for the RAAF, that's awesome man.

I wanted to do that from when I was still in school till about a year and a half ago, but I just always thought I wouldn't be academically competitive enough....

So I've gone with the soft option. I went out to archerfield a few weeks ago and had a half hour test/introductory flight (even landed the plane :) - Instructor rekons the landing was about 80% me hehe ). I knew then that I'm now set on getting my CPL. Funding was a problem though, so I've actually got a 5 year plan now for the first time in my life :D

Purpose of this thread:

I applied for, and got into, a position in a course at Aviation Australia (located just near the brisbane airport), which is the pre-requisite certificate for getting an apprenticeship as an Aircraft Maintainence Engineer.

If you're a Queensland resident, the Qld Government pays $19500 for the course, and you pay between $3000 - $3500. Too good to be true? So was ING giving away $123 with no catches. It's also Austudy approved, and you don't have to foot the 3G upfront - it can be spread over the year.

Apparently, there is a MASSIVE shortage of AMEs and LAMEs not only in Australia, but in the world. The average age of LAMEs in Australia is 48, that's why this deal exists. The Qld government is trying to pump the aviation industry with skills, so they set this place up. It's the most technically advanced facility of its kind in Australia, and it's just a stones throw from us here in Brisbane, so the deal just couldn't be better.

Pay is unbelievable in this trade aswell. In Australia you can earn up to 130K per year, and as for overseas.... a LAME for British Airways told me his friend has earnt 42pounds (uk pounds!) an hour on some jobs in Switzerland, and that's tax free. You can get a job doing this pretty much anywhere in the world you want.

So yea, applications are still open for this course starting next year, but they won't be open for much longer. There's 3 streams - mechanical, avionics, and structural.

I'm just posting this in case anyone is interested. If anyone wants to know more, testing involved in the selection process, etc., just ask.

Just a heads up yo :)

Wow that does sound great ... it's a damn shame that I suck doing any kind of work with my hands (mechanical/labouring) otherwise I would jump at the chance to do this as I love planes.

Please do continue with more details though as there might be something a dextrously chalenged person like myself might be able to do.

well it just so happens that i'm a LAME as of recently on 767s, and let me tell you somethign that might put a dampener on your chosen career, if qantas goes ahead and decides to outsource all of its heavy maintenance to chinese maintenance repair orgranisations or MRO's, then good luck finding a job. if that happens there will be 3000 qantas engineers (including me) out of a job and looking for your job.
also

qantas is one of the few places you want to work that will employ you as an apprentice, if u intend on staying in queensland the only other place i would suggest for an apprenticeship is alliance airlines, thats where i started when it was called flightwest, but i jumped ship as a 2nd year apprentice because i lost my job there along with everyone else when ansett went tits up.

GA (general aviation) is to put it bluntly, crap. s*** pay, hard work, unstable job. its a dieing industry.

QANTAS is a great place to work except for the constant bleeting from our GM about how making a 1.1billion $ profit still isnt enough and constantly threatening jobs. but you get benefits such as staff travel, staff credit union and the usual big company working conditions (10 days carers leave, 13 days sick leave, 25 days annual leave, days in lieu, proper shift penalties etc)

as for the different streams of the trade

STRUCTURES - just dont tick that box, whatever you do. its a career limiting path, once you scale the mighty heights of tradesman, thats it. within qantas we have AME levels, 6 - 12, ranging from 690/week - 1000/week as a base rate. the highest youll get paid as a sheety is $1000/week

COMPOSITE - this is a spin off from the structures stream which will become more and more in need as aircraft opt out of metal structures and the like and move to more fibreglass, carbon fibre and kevlar. they are always in short supply in qantas but you can get paid alot more in this trade outside of a major airline. the downside is you are working with dangerous chemicals, resins, dusts, carbon fibre is carcinagenic, fibreglass is itchy and annoying etc.

AVIONICS - good choice to tick, do f***all work and get paid heaps of money. major shortage of this trade, always first to be sent on courses, BUT with the advent of company approvals, intensive training to become a LAME (as it once was traditionally) is not now required. a mechanical LAME can do almost every single job and certify for it bar a few jobs which require hooking up of external test equipment. i'm not saying the days of the sparky are numbered, but there are just less opportunities as airlines would prefer to save money and multiskill existing staff.

MECHANICAL - this is what i am, the most opportunity is in this department, so when it comes to be trained by the company to become a LAME its alot more difficult to get your foot in. there is always alot more mechanical work to be done, yet the jobs you do are often dirty, s***ty(literally), and repetitive. cabin work is the worst. its just a nightmare design usually and makes for hard and frustrating work. choose this stream if you arent afraid of hard work.

LAME - believe it or not, dont believe what AA tell you about doing your apprenticeship and you wont have to do basics. i got told that when i started my apprenticeship, yet i still had to do 11 basics ($120 each). i also had to pay for my own 767 course ($4500 + 5weeks of annual leave and accomodation interstate) and CF6(engine) course ($2500 + 2.5 leave + accom). this is on top of approx 470 hours of documented experience in a logbook, and on top of that soon to be introduced fee of $1300 for an initial license application.

BUT
its worth it in the long run, within qantas, LAME pay rates start at ~1000$/week base rate, so approx $26/hour, and goes to $1800/week base rate or $47/hour. its level based, based on years of company service as a LAME and licenses held. its alot easier for avionics to scale up the LAME levelling system as they hold 3 catagories of licenses (electrical, instruments, radio), so if each catagory is worth 2 points and you need 4 points to ascend a level, 2 avionics licenses will get you 3 levels while 2 mechanical licenses will get you 2 levels. yes its f***ed, yes they do less then 1/2 the work of anyone else, yes they dont get dirty, and yes they get paid more. makes sense??

as a sidenote, this is becoming more and more prevalent within qantas, mechanical lame's are being trained up on avionics skills and are giving a maintenance authority to carry out basically all the work an avionics guy can carry out, so a 5 catagoried lame is the way of the future. (but you dont get paid for that extra knowledge)


so as an end note, go for an airline, it will always be better then GA, go for mechanical or avionics, and good luck.

last edited by cainer at 20:04:13 26/Oct/05

also if u choose to go overseas you will, as an australian, without british/european parents, not be able to work in europe.. you need permanent residency or sponsorship from an employer, you will also need (if you intend to work over there as a LAME, where the 42pound/hr comes from) to convert your license from a CASA license to a EASA license. so more exams, more classroom, more money.

I was out at FTA at Archerfield about 18 months to 2 years ago to see if I was interested, I never did go up for the test run though because I was too stingy with the $70 or whatever it was for the lap in the trainer.

Came across this notice while nosing around LJ recently... Im 24 too. Damn.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8577

last edited by trillion at 06:54:13 27/Oct/05

cheers cainer :)

yea I get the feeling the road is a little uncertain what with these IR reforms n s***. But I'm prepared to stick it out.

And yea I am going to go down the mechanical stream. Seems very appealing to me.

So do you know much about AA? Do they have a good reputation in the industry? or what.... What's the word on that mob.

cheers again dude.

AA are the only professional training organisation that i would go with. they have students from cathay pacific and dragonair amongst their international students. they all pay good money to send them there so they must be good. i went to a school called ATAE at archerfield a while ago when AA wasnt operating, and they dont compare at all to AA with classrooms, teachers or facility. but everything i hear about AA is 2nd hand from apprentices at work who went there.

IR reforms wont hurt the industry as much as qantas outsourcing the entire heavy maintenance though. according to dixon we will never be competitive enough. we will be outsourced its only a matter of time.

cainer, I just thought I might tell you what I'm up to with this :)

I started my course on the 16th of this month....

The tradestream that I'm in is called Structures/Mechanical. This year they sortof combined these two streams, and Avionics is the only other one. It isn't combined with anything.

So yea, I can pretty much choose to go structures OR mechanical after this course, and as you pointed out, I can more or less do both. The good thing about the structures component is that I think it's both composite and sheetmetal training, and as you also pointed out, the need for composite materials repair is becoming alot bigger, and will hold plenty of work in the future.

So I'm pretty chuffed about it all, and really lookin forward to getting my hands dirty and working with active aircraft.

Do you know if Qantas or Boeing offer some sort of scholarship or anything, and how I would apply if they do...?

And also, do you know if Qantas offer work experience or something similar for people undertaking this certificate? It would be handy to get a foot in the door before others, so to speak, and it wouldn't hurt having something like that on my resume for when I'm searching for a permanent apprenticeship next year.... Maybe Qantas would more likely offer me employment, etc.

We only get 4 weeks off throughout the year, but at least it would be some help if I could get some work experience in that time.

hehe, LAME.

I have a similar background to cainer, did a course at ATAE archerfield in 2000, started in regional/ga then moved to qantas 2 years ago, except im avionics. Pretty much everything he said is true, you do have it alot easier at qf than any other airline/maintainence joint in aus.

My advice is dont get your hopes set on qantas only, alot of people who did your course last year were shattered when qf turned around and said they didnt want anyone. There are heaps of places around that will offer you a stable job. If helicopters intrest you Eurocopter/Australian Aerospace take people, Helitech are reasonably big too.

You wont get work experience at qantas. its too muich of a hassle for them nowadays with all the security bulls***. Your best bet is to give alliance a try, or some of the bug smasher operators at archerfield. its not so much the experience that a future employer will care about, its that you show an actual interest in aircraft/things mechanical.

Another thing, when your instructors tell you stories about what goes on in the real world or you get some military yutz telling you about a 747, dont listen to them, you will look like an absolute tool when you do turn up as a 1st year apprentice and start sprouting off your 'knowledge' of a 747 then realising that you were fed complete crap. My advice is to remember the stuff to pass your exam, then dump it - its a whole different industry outside of the classroom, and alot of the stuff they add to the course is either a)wrong b)outdated or c) not used for the last 40years, youll learn what you need to know when you get on the job they way the company wants it. It shocked me when i went back to tafe with a reasonable grasp of what happens, listened to the instructor sprout complete rubbish with a class of guys taking it as gospel.

Im happy with avionics, but i also think i would be happy doing mechanical, although they do get most of the s***ty jobs aswell having us get them to come remove panels/rounded screws/stripped inserts (which avioincs people are mostly capable of but dont due to tradition and/or some rule or regulation) We get pretty ordinary jobs too, all depends where you work and how far your up in the pecking order.

Good luck with your course this year and finding a job next year, there will always be something for you, just not necessarilly with the big airline with the 'good' conditions.

cheers fella.

I know what you mean about new people coming onto any scene acting like they know it all - I've seen so many people like that in heaps of situations. They just come across as a total d*******. I sit next to one in this course for example :/ geez he s***s me.

I don't have my heart set on qantas at all; I really don't mind where I start out, or where I do work experience if I get some - I just thought qantas might be easier to get work experience. I thought they would maybe have work experience chaps regularly, so know how to hook it all up with ease...

But I can understand now, with all the secruity measures and what not, that it isn't the case.

Yea, as you said, it wouldn't matter to a future employer where I did work experience, just that I went out and pursued it. So I'm totally fine with anywhere, just as long I can get some at all :)

anymore snipets of advice?

cheers again.

if cainor hasnt already i'll alert gavmo/splade to this thread, he's down in sydney atm and has done the course your doing etc.

remove panels/rounded screws/stripped inserts

Damn, sounds like some hard work, is there a book I can read to learn about this?
lol

Cainer, I still havent figured out who you are, even though Ive probably worked on line 2 with you. Is it all working out now or are all the stories I hear down here true?

Anyway, Im just about to become a 4th year avionics apprentice. Did the AA course and got the apprenticeship at qantas. Just a side note on that though, im told qantas didnt take on any apprentices this year in any trade. The person that told me that is a dips*** though, so who knows.

I think qantas took around 10-12 from AA in Mechanical and Avionics last year. 5 were sparkies.

I know what you mean about new people coming onto any scene acting like they know it all - I've seen so many people like that in heaps of situations. They just come across as a total d*******. I sit next to one in this course for example :/ geez he s***s me.

Yeh, theres one in every intake here. They get sorted out soon enough though. Hell, we had one guy threaten us, swerve at us in his car and then disappeared. The place attracts some strange ones.

f*** yea ive always wanted to work on planes, always worked on cars, bikes go karts etc, so .
was set on becoming a electrician this year but f*** it this^ is where i really wanna be.

fukin thanks a fukload for the heads up and all the info everyone. top shelf!

the remove panels, rounded screws, stripped inserts is the pleb work. decent airframe work, such as flight control actuator changes, component changes, engine changes make the job worth while. working on the line is a lot more satisfying too IMO. bad airframe work is removing toilets, s*** tanks and generally all cabin work.

gavmo, i finished my apprenticeship in 2004, so you probly wouldn't have seen me much around anyway, and i skipped town back to brisbane shortly thereafter.

if you are keen to come back up to brisbane, you can rest assured if you select a preference to come back up here, you will get a job up here, but just remember, it is better then sydney heavy maitenance, but it isnt as good as line maintenance. i'm spewing that i was denied an opportunity to go for line maintenance positions, because the current management up here(kiwis.. need i say more) are the biggest bunch of tight arse head in the sand d*******s.

theres only so much 'we're looking at it, its under review, its being analyzed' answers to _every_ single issue that facility has that people can take before they get the s***s. and getting the s***s is a common occurance up here lately, the goodwill is running out and the place is going down hill.

hey fuknukle - They're still taking applications now. If only you spotted this thread when I first posted it :p

When I first posted this thread I thought there was just one big intake at the start of the year - but it turns out they take successful applicants all the way up to June I think.

There's a couple of guys still at AA that have almost finished the course I just started - they started in June.

I'm in the group 1 mechanical/stuctures class that started on the 16th. Group 2 started on the 23rd.

So there's groups starting all the time by the look of it - but I'd imagine it'll probably get a bit more spaced out though - as the applications die down.

Plus I think they want around 170 students this year - around 60 have already started. So get in! :D


Hey Gavmo, so you would have been at AA just after it was built? It's only been active for 4 years hasn't it?

And... did you find the s*** you learnt very useful and relevant in retrospect? how well focused was the training in relation to actual maintainence work?

One more thing - did you happen to meet a dude called Niles when you were there? He's a LAME that they occasionally get in to show the students practical stuff... Big black Jamacan fella...

choice im checking it out.

question: is there any level of schooling or grades etc that they look at?

ummm... well kind of...

They say they want grade 10 with passes in maths and english. Physics and/or manual arts a bonus.

But let me tell you. The first maths module starts at THE MOST base level. Adding and subtracting negative numbers, finding areas of simple shapes, fractions, etc. And ALOT of the class is having a bit of trouble already. A good deal of it may just be forgetting the very basics without the use of calcularters, but alot of it is just the competency of the students.

I assume you'd be applying for the avionics stream (electrician plans etc.)... I'm not sure if they require a higher level of maths for the avionics course, being more mathematically involved, but I really doubt it.

So the requirements are easily meetable.

The application process doesn't test those sort of skills anyway. There's an online personality type qustionare, then u go in for a 50 question short answer test that you're given 15mins to do, and you also get interviewed.

In all honesty, the interview probably counts for the most. You just have to show a determination I suppose. Show that you're very enthusiastic about it, and that you REALLY want a career in the aviation industry. With the Govt. forking out so much for every student, the interview carries alot of weight I rekon.

GL :)

I thought that the AA course was more geared towards the AM side of things(Fixing black boxes and what not) rather than the AME stream(Flight line, hangars, etc). Its a good grounding but when it comes right down to it you wont use a lot.

Some of the instructors/admin there I wasnt a real big fan of. Youll figure out who soon enough.