Groningen Airport Eelde will welcome students for the Aerospace Engineering course from September. With the new training, Eelde is responding to the growing demand for qualified aviation technicians, because a large number of them will retire in the coming years.
“There is a terrible shortage of aircraft mechanics in the Netherlands, but also worldwide,” director Meiltje de Groot of Groningen Airport Eelde said in the radio program Cassata. “That is why we are going to start a training course for MBO 4 technology students, who we would like to ask to apply.”
The training is a collaboration between the airport and aircraft maintenance company Necamco. “It is going to settle here and has received a permit to dismantle aircraft,” said De Groot. The approach is to join forces with processing companies so that we can work circularly. “So there is a lot involved in collaboration, also between business and education. That is incredibly fun.”
Students who register for the course will receive a diploma after a year and a half. “During that time, they go to school two days a week to obtain the certificates needed to become aircraft mechanics,” says De Groot. In addition, the students will then work at the airport three days a week.
Groningen Airport Eelde is therefore increasingly emerging as a species airport campuswith courses related to aviation and technology. Both the KLM Flight Academy and the Noorderpoort aviation services training course are located on the site near Eelde, which benefits the aviation cluster in the Northern Netherlands. In the coming academic year, drone pilot training will also be added.
The intention is therefore that people from the Northern Netherlands who want to follow the training no longer have to travel to the west of the country. De Groot: “This means that people who were born and raised in the Northern Netherlands can be trained here and continue to work. Then you retain them for the region.”
An important reason for bringing the aviation technician training course to Eelde is the arrival of Defense at the airport. “It is interesting for Eelde. We see opportunities for training, exercises, but also for maintenance options for the aircraft with us,” says De Groot. “We have a team of people capable of handling those aircraft.”
She is therefore happy with the social role that the airport can play, something that she believes outweighs persistent financial challenges. “If Groningen Airport Eelde were not there, then the entire campus would not be there either. I really believe that airports should not profit centers are, but social infrastructures. Keeping a region accessible and connected is extremely important, both on the ground – by road and rail – and in the air via an airport.”
