2022 AMT 40 Under 40 Maintenance Professionals: Miguel Cruz, Project Manager, AAR

Miguel Cruz has been at AAR since 2014. He started as a support technician with little experience, but quickly rose through the ranks.

“I worked my way up from support tech, utility, somebody that doesn’t know the front of the airplane and all the way to running a line with 50 to 80-plus people, several airplanes and types,” he said. “As far as heavy maintenance, done everything from small, to taking a whole vertical off an airplane or modifying an entire pylon and been very exposed to heavy, heavy, heavy maintenance on any type – 737, 747, 733, 757, 767, even had the chance to recently work with Maxs,” he said.

Cruz was introduced to AAR by way of his involvement with Civil Air Patrol as a cadet. He visited the site for an event recruiting for Civil Air Patrol. Getting to see up close the type and amount of work being performed intrigued Cruz. He called a few weeks later to inquire about a job as he was finishing up an internship with American Airlines.

“I spent almost a month working heavy maintenance with them and then line maintenance too. So that got me interested more and more and more, and that’s how I ended up doing what I’m doing,” he said.

One of the aspects Cruz says he enjoys about being part of the industry is how, as he sees it, it is only poised to grow and become more and more important to people.

“I think it’s one of those things that is a fast growing thing, and it has evolved so much since the beginning. It’s something that I think has a future that is never going to stop. It is not just going to stay there. It’s going to evolve more and more and more and more, and it’s going to get to the point that we are going to depend more on it than cars or anything else. It’s going to control the next generation for the next a hundred years. It’s unbelievable that you are part of something like that,” he said.