By Natalie Fiorilli
After 50 years of fixing airplanes, Jerry Cupec would do it all over again.
The Pittsburgh-based aircraft maintenance technician, or AMT, first fell in love with aviation as a kid watching planes take off and land at a small airport near his home in Armstrong County, Pa.
“It’s in my blood, so to speak,” he said.
Earlier this month, the FAA recognized Cupec, an American Airlines AMT, with the “Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award.” The honor is given to mechanics with 50 or more years of aircraft maintenance experience and is named after Charles Taylor, the Wright brothers’ mechanic.
The American Airlines maintenance base at Pittsburgh International Airport boasts at least 10 recipients of the national award. Employing about 300 maintenance, planning and engineering staff, the crew at PIT handles “heavy,” or extensive, overhauls conducted on planes approximately once every six years.
“Our job is important. Just like everybody’s jobs – the pilots, they have a big part in it as we all know, but we do too,” said Cupec, who works on heavy maintenance out of Hangar 5 at PIT. “We keep the airplanes mechanically fit and safe.”
Maintaining commercial aircraft is a 24/7 operation, and PIT’s American Airlines crew works in three shifts (day, afternoon, and night), seven days per week. In addition to heavy maintenance inspections, some aircraft maintenance technicians handle line maintenance on aircraft parked at the gate.
“Our job is really all about making things right,” said Bill Dofner, who is a manager at Hangar 5. “Just like you trust your mechanic that works on your car, our job is probably 10 times more because we have to make sure everything is working before it’s up in the air.”
Aircraft maintenance has evolved significantly since Charles Taylor’s day. A typical first step for mechanics conducting a heavy maintenance check is to “open up” the aircraft: removing floorboards, sidewalls, ceiling panels and, in some cases, even the seats. Heavy maintenance overhauls can take up to 40 days and essentially involve restoring the aircraft back to a “like new” condition.
Along with understanding the different components and wiring behind how an airplane works, AMTs also must be familiar with the variety of aircraft in a carrier’s fleet.
“They just have so much knowledge,” Dofner said. “Sometimes we see the same things on a different type of aircraft, and we know what to do. It’s a testament to these mechanics that they have been able to adjust and progress through the years.”
Though the job can be stressful, as it involves ensuring the safety of the traveling public, being an AMT is also very rewarding, said Cupec.
“Just seeing one go down the runway and take off and make it back, and knowing that I worked on it, that’s a really satisfying part of our job,” he said.
Dofner said the crew takes pride in their work and consider safety to be a very personal matter.
“Every time that airplane flies, we act like our family is flying on the airplane,” he said.
The local maintenance base has earned a reputation as being among the best in the business, with some of the longest-tenured mechanics in the system.
This year, American Airlines designated its Pittsburgh maintenance base as the facility that will perform acceptance checks on fresh-from-the-factory arrivals of A321neos, which are new to American’s fleet. Seventeen are scheduled to arrive in Pittsburgh in 2019, with the rest of the order to come in future years.
READ MORE: American Airlines’ PIT Maintenance Base Lands A321neo