WINSTON-SALEM (February 4, 2022) – There’s a whole lot of aviation happening at Piedmont Triad International Airport – and with it a whole lot of really good jobs.
With HondaJet’s manufacturing facility,1 FedEx Express’s Mid-Atlantic hub,2 and now Boom SuperSonic’s plan to bring more than 1,700 jobs and a $500 million investment to PTI,3 the Triad is a burgeoning aviation cluster.
“The aviation industry in North Carolina is booming and is growing,” Forsyth Tech President Janet Spriggs says in the accompanying video.
Boom CEO Blake Scholl says the supersonic Overture jet should take passengers from Newark, N.J. To London in 3-1/2 hours.4 The company has already secured contracts to supply jets to United Airlines and the U.S. Air Force.
While Guilford Technical Community College has an established aviation program as well, Spriggs says Forsyth Tech’s new Mazie S. Woodruff Aviation Technology Lab is a state-of-the art facility to train aviation mechanics.
Spriggs notes that the state legislature and Gov. Roy Cooper already have approved $106 million in incentives for Boom, and that the jobs will carry a starting salary of $60,000.
The aviation industry is clamoring for workers these days. Spriggs and Gregory Purvis, Coordinator of the Aviation Program, both refer to Forsyth Tech’s partnership with North State Aviation in Winston-Salem.
“Some of our students are able to get a job and work while they’re in this program,” says Spriggs. “They’re getting paid to come to school – it’s a wonderful opportunity.”
“They’ll take the students before they even enroll in our program, hire them, and then pay for their education all the way through,” adds Purvis.
Aviation workers make $20 to $45 an hour – or more, says Spriggs.
“These are jobs that will create family-sustaining career pathways,” she says.
Purvis provides an overview of more than 2,000 hours of classroom work in the aviation program, delving into sheet metal, electricity, welding, composites and turbine engines. Students also get to taxi the aircraft from one point to another at an airport, he says.
Due to the demand, when a student enters the program, “The one question we ask is, ‘Where do you want to go?’” Purvis says.
“And then we start advising them and talking to the right people to get them on track… to where they want to go. You know, private industry, or going to the airlines, or maybe even go somewhere around the world.”
1 https://greensboro.com/business/local/after-decades-of-work-honda-quietly-delivers-the-200th-hondajet-from-greensboro-factory/article_5a8e9470-5f79-11ec-85ac-a38bd87557e2.html.
2 https://flyfrompti.com/fedex-express-mid-atlantic-hub-to-hire-400-new-workers/.
3 https://greensboro.com/news/local_news/here-comes-the-boom-in-choosing-pti-the-jet-maker-takes-region-and-state-to/article_bfe9c2e8-7ebb-11ec-b715-1f7f91dc7c89.html#tracking-source=home-top-story.
4 https://greensboro.com/opinion/editorial/our-opinion-the-sonic-boom-heard-round-the-state/article_410d05b4-7ed1-11ec-8902-7bcafbf2f40c.html
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