Southern Museum of Flight to tackle aviation workforce shortage

The airline industry is expected to have a shortage of 200,000 pilots and 200,000 maintenance technicians in North America between now and 2039, the executive director of the Southern Museum of Flight told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce today.

“The Baby Boomers now are retiring. They’re getting out of the game,” Executive Director Brian Barsanti said in a luncheon speech at the Hoover Country Club. “The ‘greatest generation’ came back from World War II. They made a lot of babies. A lot of those babies went out into the workforce. Now they’re retiring at a higher rate, and we don’t have enough of the Gen Xers, the Ys and the Millennials and all that to fill those. There’s a huge gap.”

The Southern Museum of Flight in Birmingham hopes to help bridge that gap with a workforce training initiative that will supply much-needed skilled workers, Barsanti said.

In the spring of 2022, the museum will begin offering dual enrollment programs for high school students in conjunction with the Alabama Community College System, Barsanti said.

The museum also will help members of the military transition into the civilian airline industry and help civilian airline employees broaden their skills and expertise, he said.

The museum specifically is partnering with the Jefferson State Community College, Lawson State Community College and Snead State Community College and will become a branch campus for the Community College System, Barsanti said.

Work is underway now to convert some of the hangar space at the current 75,000-square-foot Eastlake Campus of the museum into a workforce development center that will include both classroom space and a technology lab where hands-on training can take place, he said.

Snead State Community College has an Aviation College in Albertville, but there’s nothing like that in the Birmingham area, Barsanti said.

The Southern Museum of Flight has the infrastructure, the airplane engines, brick-and-mortar space and access to faculty with airline expertise, he said.

The Alabama Workforce Training Center in Birmingham, which provides training for the construction and manufacturing trades, does a great job in those fields, Barsanti said. He sees that as a model for what can be done to prepare people for aviation electronics and maintenance jobs, he said.

Delta recently had to bring in 150 aviation technicians from outside the Birmingham area to Birmingham because Birmingham didn’t have a labor force trained in that field, Barsanti said.

It was a huge missed opportunity, he said. If Birmingham wants to continue to keep those jobs here, “we have to churn out a credentialed workforce,” he said.

Delta already has agreed to partner with the Southern Museum of Flight for its training initiative, Barsanti said.

The museum also is exploring the possibility of training for drone maintenance because so many companies are beginning to use drones and they break down, he said.

The new Aviation Workforce Initiative is a natural extension of the educational offerings the Southern Museum of Flight already offers, Barsanti said.

In 2019, the museum had about 60,000 visitors, and two-thirds of those were students from K-12 schools, he said. The workforce initiative is the next step in that educational effort, he said.

Barsanti also told the Hoover chamber crowd about an expansion project the Southern Museum of Flight is undertaking next to the Barber Motorsports Park. The museum has acquired 24 acres and is in the process of developing the land for what it is calling its Grand River campus, he said. That’s a big jump from the current 5-to-6-acre site in Birmingham’s Eastlake community, and it’s exciting to think about what the museum can do with that much more space, he said.

For more information about the Southern Museum of Flight, go to southernmuseumofflight.org.