THUNDER BAY – Confederation College students met with two dozen aviation industry companies on Wednesday as the industry continues to attempt to address its labour shortage.
The aviation-related companies attended Aviation Day, a career fair hosted by Confederation College’s Aviation Centre of Excellence, which was intended to introduce the college’s graduating students with potential employers.
“This is our second Aviation Day that we've hosted here at the college, the significance being that there are lots of jobs right now in the aviation industry, both as a pilot and aircraft mechanic, those trades or careers we offer programs for here at the college,” said Matt Bun, associate dean – Aviation.
“So, we've partnered with local, regional and national employers, aviation employers, to come and meet with our students, our soon to be graduates and also with the general public to promote careers in aviation specifically for the companies they represent.”
Like many other industries, Aviation is also experiencing a shortage of labour that has only gotten worse in recent years.
“The pilot and the aircraft maintenance shortage in Canada was definitely exacerbated from the pandemic. We saw a lot of exodus early on through the pandemic and there already was a shortage before that,” Bunn said.
“So now it's even worse than before, but we are definitely seeing and talking with a lot of our industry partners here in Thunder Bay. Everybody's looking for pilots and aircraft mechanics.”
With so many companies looking for pilots and technicians, graduating students have a lot of available choices, so companies look to events like Aviation Day to attract potential hires as they join the workforce.
Justin Mirabelli, a critical care paramedic for Ornge said the organization is looking for a lot pilots and other technicians.
“There's a constant rotation of people, very young pilots can come in quite early as well and gain a whole bunch of hours to go ahead and launch their career,” he said.
“There's a lot of internal opportunity as well to move on upwards to a captain position and then even further if they'd like to stay for longer like that.”
