Workplace Trends: How the Love of Cars Led Keith Koontz to Master Even Bigger Machines for Republic Airways at Reagan National Airport

For Keith Koontz, his path to a rewarding career in the highly sought-after field of aviation maintenance all started with his lifelong love of cars.

“I’ve always been around cars and machinery, working on them and racing them,” says Koontz, who also competitively races vehicles in the Northeast Ultimate Super Late Model Series. “After I had been working at a CNC machine shop for about four years, I wanted to learn how to work on bigger and more advanced machines.”

To obtain his Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) license, Koontz enrolled in 2015 at PIA’s Hagerstown, MD, campus. After graduating in 2017, Koontz accepted a job offer from Republic Airways at Reagan National Airport (DCA), where he currently works as a Senior Technician. Koontz’s career path from mastering smaller machines to larger ones has helped him land one of the most in-demand jobs in the U.S.

According to the 2019 Boeing Pilot & Technician Outlook, “804,000 new civil aviation pilots, 769,000 new maintenance technicians, and 914,000 new cabin crew will be needed to fly and maintain the world fleet over the next 20 years.” Yet a recent survey by the Aeronautical Repair Station Association found the most common staffing challenge for maintenance and repair organizations is “difficulty finding and retaining technical talent.”

That’s where people like Keith Koontz come in.

“The most beneficial part of my training at PIA is that it was focused on figuring out how to solve problems,” says Koontz. Analysis and problem-solving are crucial skills that he now deploys each day — because, as he explains, “you never know what kind of day you’re going to have, or what kinds of challenges you’ll need to solve. And for me, that’s the best part.”

Koontz says his typical workday starts at 5 A.M., when he arrives at Reagan and makes sure all of the Republic Airways airport trucks and equipment are ready for the day. Then the planes that were overnighted at the base get powered up and prepared for the arriving pilots. Along with their scheduled daily maintenance checks, Koontz and his team also get gate calls for the planes that come and go throughout the day. Sometimes those aircraft have maintenance needs that must be tended to before their next flight. Finally, before his shift ends at 5 P.M., Koontz makes sure all the trucks are checked and ready for the night crew’s use.

With the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that the 2018 median annual pay for aircraft and avionics equipment mechanics and technicians was $63,060, mechanically-inclined students like Koontz now have a proven path to making a living while doing what they love — and without incurring decades’ worth of student loan debt.

What advice would Keith Koontz offer to anyone who is considering pursuing a career in the aviation field?

“Never stop expanding your knowledge and skills,” says Koontz. “You can never learn enough.”