Where The Jobs Are

With jobs in many sectors of aviation evaporating over the last few years, it’s encouraging to hear that graduates from one school last week all left their ceremony with job offers in hand. All 12 graduates from Arizona’s Pima Community College in aviation structural repair are already hired, and the college says the program has a 97-percent placement rate in the 12 years it’s been running. Graduates of the intensive 10-month-long course had hundreds of jobs to choose from across the country, instructor Mark Heywood told the Tucson Citizen. “Gulfstream [in Savannah, Ga.] has 85 openings,” he said. “They would have taken every one of our graduates if they had applied.” PCC has started a 19-month-long A&P program and will graduate its first class in May 2005. “Hamilton and Gulfstream have already stood in front of the class and said, ‘I’ll hire every one of you,'” Heywood said. “There’s an even higher demand for A&P than for structures.”