Sending a message to Congress: Aviation maintenance has AN impact at home

The release of “Global MRO Market Economic Assessment,” ARSA’s 2012 economic report, offers the aviation maintenance community a new opportunity to tell lawmakers exactly how we impact the local economy.

The aviation maintenance industry employs more than 306,000 highly-skilled professionals in the United States and has a $47 billion impact on the national economy. This sector’s continued growth and job creation, despite one of the worst periods in the country’s economic history, is a testament to the quality of work ARSA’s members perform and the efficiencies they provide to air carriers.

From 2008 to 2012, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product grew only six percent (from $14.219 trillion to $15.094 trillion). Meanwhile, the U.S. aviation maintenance industry’s total economic output soared 20.35 percent, from around $39 billion to nearly $47 billion. In the same time period, as the country’s unemployment reached as much as ten percent during the height of the recession, U.S. aviation maintenance-related jobs expanded 11.63 percent, from 274,638 to 306,585.

The growing market for aviation maintenance products and services extends beyond our borders. The global maintenance market exceeds $65 billion, with North America (the United States and Canada) accounting for $23.5 billion of the total. Those figures have increased since 2008 by 29.74 percent and 21.13 percent, respectively. The maintenance industry provides the United States a positive balance of trade of more than half-a-billion dollars each year.

ARSA is working actively with key officials on Capitol Hill and at the appropriate federal agencies to educate about the report’s findings.

So why the urgency? Lawmakers in Washington are often unaware of how maintenance impacts their states and districts. They continue to use hyperbolic rhetoric and push for legislation that would threaten repair station job creation and economic growth. The blunt ax of sequestration, which chopped $486 million from the FAA’s operations budget and will likely exacerbate certification and inspection delays for repair stations, is a perfect example. Other attacks on the aviation industry, such as the so-called “corporate jet loophole,” a proposal to alter depreciation schedules for the purchase of general aviation aircraft, are political gimmicks aimed at demonizing corporate jet owners. This data will show lawmakers that these actions don’t just affect millionaires and billionaires, they reverberate throughout the industry and could prevent the creation of solid middle-class jobs.

Educate your elected officials and explain the role your repair station plays in their home district and the aviation industry. Lawmakers certainly don’t want to be responsible for supporting legislation that could hurt their constituents. I encourage you to visit ARSA’s grassroots Web site, ARSAaction.org, to help put this important data in front of your lawmakers.

Christian Klein serves as executive vice president at the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA), an international trade association that represents aviation maintenance and manufacturing companies