28 new apprentices start their training at SWISS

Twenty-eight young people commence their four-year SWISS apprenticeships in aircraft maintenance today. Three of them are female.

Twenty-five future polymechanics - three of them women - and three future automation engineers begin their four-year apprenticeships at SWISS today. Polymechanics with a specialism in aircraft maintenance are responsible for checking, servicing and repairing aircraft and their components, while automation engineers are tasked with checking various electronic aircraft systems and making modifications to their electrical equipment. Both professions require extensive expertise in both mechanical and electrical production technologies. 

“The aviation sector may be in the midst of an unprecedented crisis, but we’re still looking ahead,” says SWISS Head of Maintenance Stephan Regli. “We have already identified a medium-term future shortage of skilled personnel as a result of demographic trends. So it’s vitally important that we start training our technical specialists of tomorrow in good time. And I am delighted that we can offer such training opportunities to these 28 highly motivated young people.”

Even closer cooperation with Bülach vocational school

All 28 new trainees will spend the first two years of their course in SWISS’s Apprentice Workshop, acquiring the basic skills and knowledge of their profession and completing the theory modules required for the EASA Category A Licence. For their third and fourth course years they will then switch to more on-the-job learning, working within SWISS’s aircraft servicing and maintenance teams in their specialist field. Parallel to this, SWISS apprentices also attend vocational school, and in some cases undergo additional vocational schooling to earn their baccalaureate.

With effect from this year, SWISS is also working more closely with the Berufsschule Bülach (Bülach Vocational School) in training its aircraft engineers, with the school integrating certain parts of the modular training involved into its own curriculum on SWISS’s behalf. The resulting synergies offer a number of advantages for the SWISS trainees concerned, such as being able to simultaneously earn their EASA Category A Licence, which is valid and accepted as a confirmation of professional proficiency throughout the airline world.