On September 22, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Task Force on Youth Access to American Jobs in Aviation held its final meeting, during which the task force shared its findings and recommendations for aviation workforce stakeholders.
Four main actionable recommendations were presented, including:
- Early awareness and engagement
- Information access
- Collaboration
- Addressing financial hurdles
The task force members expressed the need for communication to tie together national and state efforts to implement these recommendations. Specifically, a group of “Regional Advisory Councils” and a “National Advisory Council” should be created to work together and support access to aviation careers among aviation stakeholders.
To address the challenges of early awareness and engagement and information access, the task force proposed several items to build awareness of aviation careers through education. These include allowing federal funding to be used to support purchasing aviation-themed books and media, providing aviation career information to teachers and career counselors, offering after-school aviation programs and building base knowledge of aviation careers as pre-service teachers enter the profession.
Potential collaboration opportunities discussed included expansion of pre-apprenticeships and registered apprenticeships to grow the future aviation workforce, dual enrollment programs and outreach to historically underserved populations.
Finally, financial hurdles could be addressed by increasing the allowable flight simulator time to obtain pilot certification, increasing the maximum Pell Grant amount and developing a national aviation scholarship program.
You can watch the full meeting here for more insight into the task force’s work.
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