2022 AMT 40 Under 40 Maintenance Professionals: Kirk Jacobs, Regional Maintenance Manager, Spirit Airlines
“The dynamic environment that aviation provides gives excitement and variety to each day,” said Kirk Jacobs, who early on had a technical and mechanical skillset. Driven by a sense of curiosity and adventure, these attributes were the right fit for aviation maintenance.
“Aviation gives you the opportunity to explore the world or stay close to home, there are so many different areas you can use your expertise, and it only takes hard work and an A&P,” Jacobs said.
After attending Redstone College in Colorado (now a Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology campus) and completing his A&P certification, Jacobs moved to Georgia to work for Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA). He worked on ATR72s, CRJ-200s and CRJ-700s as a hangar technician, then as a line technician in Florida and a lead technician in Columbia, South Carolina.
Rick Arguetta, his first lead at ASA, challenged him daily with impossible manual reference pursuits and troubleshooting pop quizzes. This both sharpened his knowledge base and instilled leadership skills worth aspiring to.
In 2014 Jacobs started working for Spirit Airlines and rising through the ranks from line maintenance technician, to senior technician, lead technician, line maintenance supervisor, senior maintenance manager at DFW and today regional maintenance manager overseeing all of Spirit’s East Coast maintenance stations and operations.
In a leadership role at DFW, Jacobs has been intricately involved as a lead driver and chair of the Air Quality committee. Working with Airbus and Pratt & Whitney, he enabled frontline execution and introduction of AQE improvements, including intergraded technical support pathways and interaction of post-event briefings with frontline teams, which yielded real-time results for Air Quality on the Spirit Fleet and improvements within the aviation community.
In addition to his day-to-day work, Jacobs serves as the Mx representative for the aircraft recovery team, the AMT competition team advising manager and has led a team of 50+ technicians at the Spirit DFW NEO engine support location. With Spirit being the first domestic air carrier to operate the PW1100 GTF NEO engine, he has led the station in over 80+ NEO engine changes with direct oversite of in-house modifications & EBU builds. His collaboration with the OEM for technical and process improvements has had a direct industry impact on the reliability improvements of the PW1100.
Lastly, he is a program advisory committee member for the Aviation Institute of Maintenance and TCC Tarrant County College in Dallas, Texas.
