2022 AMT 40 Under 40 Maintenance Professionals: Michael Petrossian, Director of Maintenance, R&L Carriers & Loyal Jet LLC

Michael Petrossian was raised immersed in aviation. His father owned a small maintenance shop in Fort Lauderdale and, as a child, Petrossian would spend an exceptional amount of time at the airport learning from his surroundings.

“I was lucky to be born into aviation and quickly became pretty good at working on aircrafts. I had many mentors who shared a lot of the old knowledge with me. It was great being around maintenance hangars in the late '80s, early '90s. It gave me a great foundation,” he said.

Petrossian said he loves everything about working on aircraft. “I love the job, working on the aircraft, troubleshooting, saving the customers money, and then, the satisfaction of, completing jobs so that the principles are happy,” he said.

Petrossian is currently the director of maintenance for R&L Carriers and during his off hours, runs his own company – Loyal Jet – where he performs maintenance on a wide variety of corporate jets. “Pretty much any corporate jet on the market, I’ll work on,” he said.

The complexity of the work, Petrossian said, is what he enjoys the most. “The complexity of the job and the challenge that the job brings. One of the things I love is when an authorized service center is having difficulty resolving an issue and after exhausting all possible solutions, an interested party will call me for my input and within 10 minutes, we have the problem resolved. It’s like solving a puzzle and I really enjoy that,” he said.

And working on corporate jets, Petrossian feels a pride in that he is able to keep his principles flying safely.

“I keep a lot of high-net-worth individuals safe while they’re flying. They’re able to make their meetings and scheduled trips with reliable aircrafts. So the satisfaction to me is, the principles are able to operate their airplanes to make these important trips to further their success, which in turn, shows that I was successful in my job as well. If they’re able to utilize their aircraft, within 98% capacity and not have AOG events or reliability issues, I am doing my job well and take pride in that,” Petrossian said    

He adds that he thinks more people thinking about joining the field should consider the corporate side of the industry.

“When people ask me advice on getting into aviation, some people like to go to the airlines, but me? Corporate aviation. You're working on clean airplanes, prestigious pieces of equipment, they're nice. Corporate aviation also allows you to meet interesting people along the way, from veterinarians to celebrities. It’s a fun aspect for sure,” he said.