StandardAero, a global provider of support services for commercial and military aircraft with a major presence at Port San Antonio, raised $1.44 billion earlier this month in what Reuters called the third-biggest initial public offering of the year.
Between investors pushing the stock price up 30% on its first day on the New York Stock Exchange and multiple acquisitions — StandardAero recently snapped up its 13th company since 2015 — the 113-year-old jet engine repair company is now primed for further expansion. Executives in San Antonio say much of that growth will happen here.
About 850 of the company’s roughly 8,000 employees currently work out of an 810,000-square-foot, U-shaped building on the Port San Antonio campus, next door to Boeing’s San Antonio operations. The building is so massive it could fit 13 football fields inside it.
Well-lit, spotlessly clean and orderly, colored tape on the white floor delineates precise work spaces, equipment and parts. Gleaming jet engines in various states of assembly surround small teams of engineers in blue polo shirts. Technicians work from manuals across five engine lines.
San Antonio is already StandardAero’s second-largest location, and within the next five years, said Dan Gonzales, vice president of business and development, he’d like to see it become the largest. Right now that distinction lies in the company’s founding city of Winnipeg, Canada, which supports about 1,500 workers.
The San Antonio location has been growing steadily for years, but that growth has accelerated as the company expands from repairing legacy engines like the J85, which powers the Air Force’s fleet of T-38 trainer aircraft, to maintaining newer engines like the commercial LEAP and the Boom Supersonic Symphony, which is still in the design phase.
That growth, however, found StandardAero’s San Antonio leaders scrambling to hire in a city that’s not exactly awash in aviation mechanics. An aging workforce put more pressure on the company. Hallmark University and St. Philips College, which offer the only aviation tech programs in town, simply couldn’t graduate enough people to meet their demand.
They decided to train workers on the job, creating a 12-week program that would pay new employees to learn the basics. Launched last spring, nearly 130 people have since graduated. Many are former military personnel, but trainees also include young people with little experience who now work alongside seasoned mechanics.
The training program was a major investment, said Rick Pataky, vice president/general manager of defense services in San Antonio, but it’s already paying dividends.
Pataky oversaw StandardAero’s most recent acquisition, of Aero Turbine Inc. of California, which employs about 200 people. That location is expected to grow, too, and as it does, Pataky said, the company will likely train new California workers in San Antonio.
Thus far, most trainees come from San Antonio, and with StandardAero expected to add hundreds more positions in the coming years, it needs to keep the pipeline full.
The next generation
The company has made a good start by adding second-generation employees like Aaliyah Gonzalez, who was in one of the first training cohorts. An ROTC graduate of John Paul Stevens High School on the city’s far West Side, Gonzalez, now 21, works on the Rolls Royce RB211 engine line, balancing turbine and compressor rotors.
“I love it,” she said. “There’s never a rotor that’s the exact same as the one before. It’s a challenge.”
Gonzalez is following in the footsteps of her father, Adan Gonzalez, a machinist and welder who has spent 23 years at StandardAero, after a 15 year stint in the oil fields. He works on the same engine as his daughter, albeit in a more advanced capacity.
What first struck the elder Gonzalez when he hired was the cleanliness of the facility. Working in oil fields across Texas, he said, “It’s dirty. You’re in the heat, you’re in the cold.” What he noticed next about StandardAero was “the way they treated people,” and the opportunities that arose the longer he stayed.
StandardAero paid for Gonzalez to learn to weld. It’s now helping to pay for his daughter to earn her airframe and powerplant license at St. Philip’s College, so she can climb the ladder at StandardAero.
The company’s training program takes place in purpose-built classrooms above the shop floor. The program is modular, so those with experience can move more quickly, yet thorough enough to give someone without little experience a foundation to be safely working after 482 hours of training.
A career path
Amadeo Ortiz is another second-generation employee.
A graduate of CAST Tech High School in downtown San Antonio, Ortiz thought he was headed for a career in IT. But after graduation, he realized he didn’t want to spend his days at a desk, staring at a screen.
His father, another 23-year veteran of the company, encouraged him to consider StandardAero’s training program. Today, he’s working on the LEAP engine and talking his buddies into applying.
Amber Young is an Air Force veteran who pivoted away from health care training during the pandemic. She’s also working on the LEAP, helping set up the engine line’s massive new work area, and is part of the field services team, meaning she’ll travel to clients’ locations for certain work.
Like Ortiz and Gonzalez, Young sees a career path for herself at StandardAero. She’s planning to earn a business degree — with the company’s assistance — so she can eventually move into a management role.
Greg Chapman, the company’s director of training and workforce development, said retention is a major goal. He pointed out that newer engines like the LEAP “will be around for another 40, 50 years,” meaning younger employees can build their careers around them.
And while automation and AI are bound to have an impact on the industry in the coming decades, “the work we do is dynamic enough, and skilled enough” that humans will be difficult to replace, he said. “These are pretty solid jobs.”
The in-house training program has not come cheap, but the company has been able to defray some costs through Ready to Work’s on-the-job training subsidy, which reimburses employers up to $150,000, capped at $10,000 per employee.
“And of course, the people you bring on still have to become seasoned,” Pataky said. “But it’s been a big success. We’ve been able to bring a lot of good people into all the programs in San Antonio.”
