Aims Community College student Kira Davis-Weber prefers working with her hands over sitting in a classroom. She’d rather look inside of a machine with dirt under her fingernails than type at a keyboard with a manicure.
Davis-Weber, a 30-year-old Greeley resident in Aims’ automotive program, will soon have a chance to open up a different kind of machine: an airplane.
In January, Davis-Weber plans to be among the first cohort of students in the college’s new aviation maintenance technician program. Based in Loveland, students will receive airframe and powerplant training toward Federal Aviation Administration certification while adding to Aims’ aviation industry programs.
Davis-Weber wants to fix cars and airplanes. One day, she wants to fly a plane.
“I like to know how things work,” Davis-Weber said. “Now that I know how to fix cars, fixing airplanes is not that different in the grand scheme of things. I think planes would be a cool way to go.”
Davis-Weber’s professional interests are well timed. There is a need for workers across aviation sectors worldwide, according to an Aims aviation official and industry data. Less than 3% of aircraft technicians are women, according to Michael Sasso, who is the director of the Aims program.
Davis-Weber’s pursuit of the FAA airframe and powerplant certification, also known as A&P certification, will allow her to perform maintenance on an aircraft’s structure (the airframe) and engine (the powerplant) out in the field.
Work continues inside of of the building at the Aims Community College Aircraft Maintenance Training Center in Loveland on June 10, 2025.(Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)The airframe and the powerplant are the two ratings given to mechanics, who can be rated for one or other, but it’s valuable to have both. After up to two years of classes, Aims students will be eligible to take FAA-administered tests to work in the field. Passing the tests means the technicians may work anywhere in aerospace, including for an airline or at a local municipal airport.
Aims’ aircraft maintenance training will be offered to students through a two-year associate degree in applied science. Certificate options will be added as the program evolves. The college already has aviation programs for pilots, unmanned aircraft (drones) and air traffic controllers. Aims calls this its aviation ecosystem, and the maintenance component had been missing.
David Oehler, Aims vice president of academic affairs, said the college generally sets up new career and technical education programs in consultation with advisory committees of industry professionals. The college advances the recommendations or insight to learn more about the practicality of adding programs, such as what is the job demand and potential salaries locally and in Colorado.
“We try to gather a lot of intelligence to know that if we’re going to start a program, we’re going to be able to maintain it,” Oehler said.
The aircraft maintenance training center is a 56,000-square foot building undergoing renovation on Langley Avenue at the Northern Colorado Regional Airport in Loveland. Aims bought the building for $19.5 million, according to Larimer County property records. The cost of the renovation is not currently available with renovations in progress, Aims said.
Workers inside the new Aims Community College Aircraft Maintenance Training Center in Loveland work inside the hangar of one of the buildings on June 10, 2025.(Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)Sasso said the Aims is remodeling the building to give it an atmosphere of a college building. A part of the building was previously a hangar for corporate aircraft.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics say aircraft mechanics and technicians have a median annual salary of about $80,000 — meaning half the workers earned more and half earned less.
Aerospace corporation and manufacturer Boeing estimates the need for 2.4 million new personnel in global aviation within 30 years. Boeing’s numbers cite 674,000 new pilots, 716,000 new maintenance technicians and 980,000 new cabin crew.
Aims Community College aircraft maintenance program director Michael Sasso talks about the new tools the students will be using to repair aircrafts inside the Aircraft Maintenance Training Center in Loveland on June 10, 2025.(Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)In the same span, within 30 years, Boeing says in North America will need 413,000 aviation workers, 123,000 pilots and technicians and 184,000 cabin crew.
The average aviation technician is about 56 years old, with 70% of aviation technicians at or beyond retirement age, according to Sasso.
“Years ago, we made a decision in aviation not to train a bunch of people, and it was a bad decision,” Sasso said. “We’re paying the price for that now. It’s the same plight that we’re going through pilots, losing a ton of pilots every year. We’re losing a ton of air traffic controllers every year.”
Brett Levanto of the Aeronautical Repair Station Association said the shortage of technical workers in aviation has been “top story, lead item No. 1” for at least a decade.
A 2023 report from global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, which partners with ARSA, shows impending shortages among maintenance technicians will be disruptive to the industry as a whole.
“But anxiety over a dearth of aircraft maintenance workers was pushed to the forefront again as the pandemic waned and the raft of early retirements during COVID began to put a squeeze on the labor market,” according to Oliver Wyman.
A huge aircraft engine sits inside the new Aims Community College Aircraft Maintenance Training Center in Loveland on June 10, 2025.(Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)Levanto, vice president of operations at ARSA in Arlington, Virginia, said aviation is in a place where full employment for the amount of maintenance work available is a situation where demand exceeds supply.
“In the industry, it’s kind of considered that the No. 1 constraint on capacity for performing work is people to perform that work,” he said. “You can have hangar space, you can have equipment, you can have workshop space if you’re performing component work, but we’re really struggling to fill the technical roles for the individuals to perform that work.”
Levanto said the Aims’ program offers a high value to the community at large and this comes with frustration for the aviation industry workforce. Levanto said the students’ A&P background will transfer to other industries — such as at amusement parks to fix rides, in factories and in other modes of transportation.
Sasso said the Aims students will learn sheet metal, composites, hydraulics, electrical systems and welding. The diversity of industries to which the students can then apply their skills will make the training center a workforce development hub.
“The skills they’re learning will make them incredibly demanded in basically any technical field you can imagine,” Levanto added.
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