A Careers Awareness Day will be held at Lufthansa Technik at the airport on Thursday from 9.30am to 3pm.
This will be the second open day to be held at the facility; the first was held on 13 December and was extremely popular. Families, especially parents with children, are welcome.
They will be able to see the work environment at LTM, what the work consists of, how C-checks are carried out on planes, and so on.
This Open Day or Careers Awareness Day is ideal to help possible recruits decide to choose one of the three new courses that MCAST is beginning in October.
As it has already announced, LTM has decided to widen its operations in Malta with the creation of a new facility, at some distance from its present facility, to carry out the far more complicated D-checks on planes, eventually doing this even on the new A480 Airbus.
LTM employs 160 people at present, plus 60 apprentices and some 30 ex-pats. In the past few years it has been in existence, LTM has carried 250 C-checks on Boeing 737s and Airbus 319/320 and 321 type of planes.
The new investment will see the employment of a further 250 employees, 180 of whom will be required as soon as late 2008 when the new facility starts operations.
This explains the urgency with which LTM is looking for possible recruits, even though the students chosen for the courses MCAST is launching will not be employed with LTM until the successful completion of their course, when they can also go and work with the other aircraft-based facilities in Malta – Medavia, Air Malta, the European Flight Academy, and so on.
In an interview, LTM’s HR Manager Antoinette Caruana and Employee Development Executive Philip Zammit explained that contrary to widely-held perception, LTM is not only looking for engineers but also for “people with skilled hands” as long as they have the right attitude to quality and work.
Working in planes is not the dirty, mucky work people sometimes think mechanics do, since it is far removed from the traditional work practice at a garage.
Furthermore, people who do these courses can progress in their career: their certification allows them to go abroad and work as qualified workers; their licences are their passports.
Nor is this a mainly male job. LTM has women in its workforce and also five female apprentices. Most of the tasks employees do are gender-neutral and more girls at LTM can help reverse the mainly male dominance when it comes to skilled mechanical jobs.
The courses:
• Aircraft Maintenance Category A Licence Course
Aim: To equip individuals with the necessary theoretical and practical understanding of aircraft maintenance. Duration: 19 months. Requirements: Either Sec/O Level passes in Maths, Physics and English Language at grade 5/C or better; or MCAST Foundation Certificate in Engineering. 30 students wanted.
Sheet Metal and Composite Material Course
Aim: For individuals who intend to become qualified in sheet metal and/or composite material technicians particularly in the aircraft maintenance business. Duration: 14 months. Requirements: MCAST Foundation Certificate in Engineering. 70 students wanted.
• MCAST Certificate in Aircraft Maintenance Mechanics
Aim: This course equips candidates with specialised skills required in the field of aircraft maintenance. Duration: One-year full time in conjunction with MCAST/BTEC First Diploma in Engineering. Requirements: Students who have applied for and are eligible for entry in the MCAST/BTEC First Diploma in Mechanical Engineering or MCAST-BTEC First Diploma in Mechanical Engineering (Electronics). 80 students required.