The field of aerospace non-destructive testing has been suffering from a skills shortage, says Fabrice Quarante, aerospace NDT academy manager at Testia, the Airbus-owned global NDT specialists.
“There is a distinct tension in the market,” says Quarante. “We are facing a significant wave of retirements of the experts who built the industry in the 1980s and 1990s.”
According to Quarante, anecdotal evidence suggests that nearly 30 to 40% of the aerospace NDT specialists working in Europe at the highest experience grade are within 5 to 10 years of retirement.
“The loss of expertise is a challenge,” says Quarante. “NDT is an art grounded in science. Losing mentors means younger technicians may know the theory but cannot access the heuristic intuition developed over decades of inspecting aging aircraft.”
The same problem exists in North America, says Roger Engelbart, a past president of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT) and a retired aerospace NDT engineer. “In general, there’s a shortage of engineers,” says Engelbart. “There’s a shortage of skilled technicians that have experience and certification. Lots of folks are retiring out and not as many are coming in.”
Experience gap
There are many factors fueling the skills shortage, one of which is the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to large-scale layoffs in the aviation industry because of the global slowdown in commercial air travel.
“It severed the pipeline,” says Quarante. “Many experienced contractors left the industry for more stable sectors, such as energy, rail or IT and did not return.
“We are now feeling the gap of the missing middle. We have seniors and fresh juniors, but a shortage of experienced Level 2s with 5 to 10 years of experience.”
Quarante believes that the difficulty in attracting new talent to the profession can be at least partially blamed on a problem with NDT’s image. “NDT is often seen as the invisible guardian of aerospace,” he says. “Young talent is drawn to digital and AI roles and NDT is mistakenly viewed as dirty work – penetrant, magnetic particle testing. But modern NDT involves digital radiography, phased array ultrasonics, and robotics. We may need to rebrand NDT as digital assurance.”
Another factor that may be deterring aspirants from pursuing a career in NDT is the barriers to entry imposed by the rigorous on-the-job experience requirements to become a technician.
“For aspiring NDT technicians, the greatest challenge is rarely the training or examinations – it is the requirement for documented practical industrial experience,” says Patrick Boulton, senior technical and certification engineer at the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing (BINDT).
Boulton notes that all certification systems require candidates to “accumulate defined minimum experience hours in each NDT method and, where applicable, for specific NDT techniques such as PA-UT [phased array ultrasonic testing].”
In the case of complex test methods like ultrasonic testing (UT) or radiography (RT), achieving Level 2 certification typically requires that the candidate has undergone anywhere between 800 and 1,600 hours of documented experience, notes Quarante. “This ensures that a technician hasn’t just passed a test but has seen enough ‘real-world’ defects to be reliable,” says Quarante.
Since these many hours of experience must be gained under supervision and within a genuine industrial environment, Boulton says that this creates a
“well-recognized paradox within the industry, that employment is required to gain experience, yet experience is required to gain employment.”
NDT’s roots
This importance of on-the-job training is baked into the DNA of the profession, dating back to World War II, when formal training in NDT first began in aerospace.
At the time, the mass production of military aircraft for the war effort dovetailed with the development of techniques like ultrasonic testing, and as Allied air forces applied these new methodologies to the maintenance of their fleet, a more systematic approach to testing and training was initiated.
From those early days, training has developed into two distinct models. Boulton says, “Unlike many engineering disciplines, NDT competence is formally controlled through internationally recognized certification systems.
“Within aerospace, two distinct but parallel certification models exist: employer-based certification and third-party personal certification.
“When both certification schemes are used together in parallel, they form an immensely powerful tool in the employer’s arsenal for confirmation that the certified individual has attained an element of core knowledge which is complemented by specific information on how to test the employer’s product.”
For employer-based certification, the dominant frameworks are defined in Europe by European Norm (EN) 4179 and in the USA by National Aerospace Standard (NAS) 410.
Under EN 4179 / NAS 410, the employer is the certifying authority and in most cases all of the training, examinations, and on-the-job experience requirements are managed internally. Under the employer-based certification process technicians can advance through four levels – Limited Level 1, Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3.
A technician who has reached Level 1 is qualified to perform specific calibrations and inspections under supervision but cannot evaluate results or determine acceptability. Level 2 inspectors are authorized to set up and calibrate equipment, conduct inspections, interpret and evaluate results, and make accept/reject decisions in accordance with applicable procedures and specifications. Level 3 personnel, meanwhile, hold “overarching technical responsibility,” says Boulton, and can oversee an organization’s entire NDT system.
Going global
According to Quarante, the European and US standards are “for all intents and purposes in the aerospace context, technically equivalent.”
He adds, “One of the great achievements in our industry is the harmonization between EN 4179 and
NAS 410. If you are trained and certified under a written practice compliant with EN 4179, it is generally recognized by US primes, provided the ‘Responsible Level 3’ accepts the training hours and examination results. Harmonization is vital for the global supply chain, enabling for example a technician in Toulouse to inspect parts for a customer in Seattle.”
While this is true, it is also the case that NDT technicians switching jobs between major OEMs may find it necessary to retrain for certification levels they are already qualified in.
Engelbart says, “In the USA, companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman all have very similar certification programs but differ according to in-house specifications.”
“They run training themselves because everything is proprietary. They don’t want an outside agency running their examinations because they would be privy to the proprietary information.”
The secretive nature of these companies’ applications means that a NDT technician joining one of these OEMs might have to gain experience on them first in order to re-certify themselves with the aerospace manufacturer’s in-house system, says Engelbart.
The alternative to the employer-based route is third-party personal certification under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9712 standard.
Under ISO 9712, certification is issued directly to the individual by an independent certification body, such as BINDT in the UK. While in theory the third-party standard is transferable between employers, in reality most aerospace organizations will still require EN 4179 / NAS 410 certification for work on safety-critical aircraft components.
“In aerospace, employer-based certification is king,” says Quarante. He attributes this to the fact that, unlike other industries that use NDT, in aerospace the employer is liable for airworthiness.
“Therefore, the employer must certify the staff,” he adds. “Third-party training is used for education, but the final certification is an employer mandate.”
The necessity for employer-mandated certification means that “employer sponsorship is the single most critical factor in launching a successful NDT career,”
says Boulton.
This brings us back to where we started – the skills shortage that is threatening the long-term viability of the industry, and which aerospace companies must take the lead in addressing.
“Aerospace organizations that invest in structured trainee programs, combining classroom training, supervised inspection work, mentoring, and progressive certification, provide the essential pathway into the profession,” says Boulton.
“Such programs allow individuals to accumulate experience while contributing productively to the organization under controlled conditions. Without this support, even highly motivated and capable individuals may find themselves unable to progress beyond theoretical qualification.”
Future promise
Quarante believes an important factor in retaining engineering talent is ensuring the job remains interesting.
“Technicians stay in a role when they feel that they are learning,” says Quarante. “Moving from manual inspection to automated systems, or learning advanced methods like shearography, keeps the job intellectually stimulating for people.”
After a long career in NDT, Engelbart is enthusiastic about what awaits new recruits to the profession.
“NDT is a great career, first of all because there are so many opportunities in the field,” Engelbart says. “You
are working right at the cutting edge of the air transportation world.
“There is so much to learn, and there are ways to move up in qualification and experience, and in responsibility and knowledge. It is just a wonderful place to be, which is why I made it my career.”
Established NDT professionals can also take the experience gained and expand it to other domains within aerospace, says Boulton.
“Many experienced NDT professionals move into roles such as quality management, technical authority, training, auditing, or regulatory liaison with organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration within the US and the Civil Aviation Authority within the UK,” he says.
“The field also offers opportunities to specialize in developing advanced digital inspection systems through academia, and developing automation and advanced data analysis – areas that are becoming more important as aerospace inspection embraces Industry 4.0 and digital twins and, ultimately, AI.”
