Analysis of employability for the civil aviation maintenance graduates of Turkey

With every passing day, the center of gravity for air traffic for the Middle East and Turkey is shifting toward becoming a center for airway transport, maintenance, repair, overhaul (MRO) and transfer. The MRO sector is gaining importance because of this increase in Turkey. The purpose of this study is to examine the future employability of the graduates receiving civil aviation maintenance training in Turkey.

The paper uses past seven years’ data about maintenance personnel of Turkey. It includes all-level students, recently working personnel and retired personnel of each year. Regression analysis and Markov analysis were used to show the prediction of aviation maintenance personnel.

The paper provides quantitative results about employability of maintenance personnel under the real numbers of alumni and working and retired personnel in Turkey. The results show that the number of graduates will be greater than the number of staff members in certifying categories in 2018. Presently, Turkey meets the employment expected, but in the future, aviation maintenance personnel number is rising, and there will be an excess number of graduates left over in Turkey.

Because of the chosen region, Turkey, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to conduct analysis for other countries which have an important role in aviation.

The paper includes implications for the government maintenance personnel policy and educational policy for managing all types of maintenance personnel in Turkey.

This kind of personnel needs analysis has not been done before, and this is the originality of this paper. It will in turn lead to an analysis of planning for allocation of maintenance staff and alumni. The authors collected all official numbers about maintenance personnel from Turkish Student Selection and Placement Center of Turkey, Turkish Technic and Turkish Civil Aviation Reports.