Background

SAS is Scandinavia’s leading commercial airline with main hub´s in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo. We maintain the highest frequency of departures to and from Scandinavia and connect smaller regional airports with larger hubs. As part of Star Alliance, we fly our customers to 1300 destinations worldwide. SAS employee about 10.000 people and has its headquarters in Stockholm.

Engagement with the SKILLMAN Project

SAS Tech is a part of SAS Group. Its main focus is aircraft maintenance and has its technical bases in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo.
SAS Tech has been involved in the Skillman project as a partner to TEC in Denmark. SAS participated in the project Composite Materials. SAS main focus has been to feed TEC with the aviation business needs and challenges within structure and to supply TEC with aviation technicians on their pilot courses within Composite.

Outcomes

The industry are facing major challenges within composite repair. Most of the technicians today are so called Sheet Metal workers with its competence in metal structures. Since most of all new airliners are constructed with more and more composite material, the industry need to up-skill their staff and to feed in new people with the right skills and knowledge.
The feedback from those SAS technicians taking part of the pilot course is in general very good. The level and content of the course syllabus is overall on target for SAS needs. However, there is much more job to be done and the Skillman project made a very good fundament for further development. A joint European curricula and standard approved by the EASA agency will be beneficial for the industry.

In his daily work, Björn Borgelin is responsible for the training delivery within SAS and to their external customers around the world. He was introduced to the SKILLMAN project in 2016 and SAS is a partner from the aviation industry in the SKILLMAN project and a very close partner to TEC in Copenhagen. One the main challenges for SAS is according to Björn the need on competencies within composite in general and composite repair in particular. As a representative of the aviation industry, they could assist TEC with our needs and demands for the future in the SKILLMAN project. This helped TEC to develop their curriculum for their composite repair course. SAS Technicians participated in the pilot-project hosted by TEC and the outcome of the programme was very satisfying for SAS. The technicians learned a lot and gained many new competencies in the pilot-programme. Björn is convinced, that this is the way to upskill technicians and he believes that they are one step ahead to meet the future demands and challenges that the aviation industry stand before. On that notice, he thinks that SKILLMAN is a very good starting point for the future.