People walk around a Boeing 727 inside the new Pima Community College Aviation hangar during an opening ceremony for the center expansion on Thursday.

 Rebecca Sasnett photos, Arizona Daily Star

Pima Community College on Thursday christened a $21 million expansion of its Aviation Technology Center at Tucson International Airport that will double its student capacity, helping to relieve a severe shortage of aviation mechanics.

The expansion more than doubles the aviation center’s footprint on South Park Avenue, to 87,000 from 35,000 square feet, adding additional classrooms, labs and a second hangar large enough to accommodate large jetliners.

The expansion will allow the highly-rated aviation tech school school to double the number of enrolled students to 250 and graduate 75 or more students per year, Pima Dean of Applied Technology Greg Wilson said.

Pima Aviation Technology Center Director Jason Bowersock said the expansion is just the latest milestone in a journey that started when the school launched its federally-certified aircraft airframe and powerplant program in 1990.

The school opened its first hangar in 2001 and added an avionics tech program in 2008 and expanded its facility, then in 2016 added a program to streamline the transition of military aircraft maintainers to civilian jobs.

The Pima program is one of only a handful of Federal Aviation Administration-approved schools in the U.S. with curriculum and facilities to accommodate large commercial jets. The Pima Center now has 20 aircraft including a Boeing 727 and a Bombardier CRJ-200 narrow-body regional jet recently donated by SkyWest Airlines, which has announced plans to build a new maintenance hangar at TIA.

Pima plans to add a certified program in non-destructive testing next fall, thanks to a $490,000 FAA grant the school won in January, and is adding a program in unmanned aircraft funded partly with a $2.5 million grant from the Thomas R. Brown Family Foundation in 2020.

“There’s never been a better time to be in this industry, to try and go out there a find a meaningful career,” said Bowersock, a former Air Force flight chief who joined the Pima program as an instructor in 2015 and was named director in 2016.

Pima officials described how winning the state funding that made the expansion possible was a team effort including local aviation industry leaders Dave Querio, president of the Tucson-based commercial aviation maintenance firm Ascent Aviation, and Mark Gaspers, longtime government operations manager for Boeing Co.

Querio, who sits on Pima’s aviation advisory board, said the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened a growing shortage of aviation techs, noting that some 23,000 or 8% of the workforce left the industry since the pandemic emerged.

Maya Vazquez, airframe and power plant student, explains the cockpit of a Boeing 727 aircraft to her mother Silvia Vazquez, left, and father Luis Vazquez during Pima Community College Aviation Technology Center building expansion ceremony on Friday.

Querio said his own company, which besides TIA has maintenance stations at Pinal Air Park and Roswell, New Mexico, has about 550 employees but has 130 open positions.

“It’s a great field — it’s not glitz and glamour but it will take you around the world,” Querio said.

Pima airfame and powerplant tech student Suzanne Roy described how she enrolled in the aircraft maintenance program after COVID-19 halted her study of classical music and voice.

She said that while many aircraft techs have military experience, which she didn’t have, the school provided all the training she needed and is looking to graduate and find a well-paying job in six months.

“Pima Community College bridges the gap between those with experience and those without, leading them to fulfilling and lucrative careers in aviation maintenance,” Roy said, noting that Boeing has estimated that more than 600,000 new mechanics will be needed industrywide by 2041.

The median annual wage for aircraft mechanics and service technicians was $65,380 in May 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

PCC Chancellor Lee Lambert thanked industry leaders who helped lobby legislators and Gov. Doug Ducey to include the $15 million appropriation in the state budget.

Sens. David Gowan, a Sierra Vista Republican and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and co-chair Sen. Vince Leach of SaddleBrooke, were singled out for shepherding the appropriation through the budget process with the Ducey’s support.

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Contact senior reporter David Wichner at dwichner@tucson.com or 520-573-4181. On Twitter:

@dwichner. On Facebook: Facebook.com/DailyStarBiz