With an interest and enjoyment with working on things, Nicholas Stanley got his start in aviation after embarking on a computer science pathway in college. After completing two years and realizing it wasn’t the right fit, that summer he toured his local A&P school in Memphis, Tennessee, enrolled and completed his airframe and powerplant certifications.
Starting as an A&P at Mobile Aerospace and gaining 757, 747 and A320 family training, he recalls his first lead as making the biggest influential impression. His philosophy of engaging the new technicians, as was Stanley, right into the larger more complex jobs early on, instilled confidence and stability into working the trade.
In addition to his A&P position at Mobile Aerospace, Stanley was a lead A&P at Embraer in Nashville, Tennessee, a line technician, senior technician, maintenance supervisor and is now currently a fleet engineer in the structures department for the past seven years at Spirit Airlines.
Advancing from the front line to the engineering department within Spirit, his current position responsibilities include evaluating aircraft damage during AOG events, adapt and customize repair designs for submission to the OEM, overseeing major and minor repairs during HMV visits and managing post damage RTS events such as: taxi-way excursions, tail strikes, NLG oversteers, ground vehicle impacts, jetbridge impacts and lightning strikes.
As a bridge between technician and engineer, he trains maintenance control and line maintenance technicians on the Airbus SRM and damage mapping and evaluation processes. He has received familiarization training on the 757-300, 747, E190, E170, E145, Embraer linage and the Airbus A320 family including the A319, A320 and A321. In addition to the fleet specific training, he’s attended V2500 classes, Airbus repair engineering training on composites, metallic structures, airbus SRM and Airbus fasteners and cold expansion classes, as well as being a DTE and is RII, CAT III and AWR certified. This has elected him as a member of the Spirit response NTSB team in the event it is ever needed.
Stanley expands his aviation involvement by attending A&P school visits as part of the Michigan educators as a keynote speaker sharing his specific insights on the structures element of technical operations within the airline. His future goals including advancing within Spirit in the engineering field and hopes he is able to obtain an even more in-depth knowledge on OEM practices and manufacturing elements
"I originally went to college for TV production and then computer science straight out of high school but figured out that neither of those fields were what I really wanted to be doing," Stanley recalled. "I had always liked working on cars and doing things with my hands. After two years of college, I met up with a friend from high school that was going to A&P school and after a tour of the school, I signed up for classes as it immediately felt like what I would really enjoy doing."
As for future plans, he says while it is hard to plan far into the future, Stanley's current goal is to help grow the Spirit Airlines engineering department and those capabilities to eventually make them one of the best in the industry.
