Career Colleges » South Dakota » Trades and Careers » Aviation
Looking for accredited career colleges, technical schools, and universities in South Dakota offering Aviation degrees. Aviation: Aircraft Powerplant Technician and airframe mechanics work on repair and maintenance of private and commercial airplanes.
This ancestral home of the Sioux nation is sure to be a great place to pursue a college education. South Dakota college students enjoy a wide variety of extracurricular activities, including exploring wind caves, visiting incredibly dinosaur fossil sites, and re-living the life of the Old West, with dude ranches, horseback riding establishments, and rodeos.If your car breaks down on the highway, it might be extremely frustrating, but it isn't necessarily life-threatening. If a plane breaks down in the air, however, this can easily translate to disaster. That is why aviation maintenance programs are so vital to the airline industry. Every plane must be thoroughly inspected, certified, and cleared before it can take off. As you can imagine, those with training in this very detail oriented field have a very challenging job.
Most programs will expose you to a variety of disciplines including: electrical engineering, engine repair, GPS/satellite systems, communications equipment, and navigation. You'll learn all or most of these different areas, but many airplane mechanics only specialize in one or two areas. So you might focus primarily on the landing gear, or the navigation system, or the life-support systems. In any event, your 2+ years of training will prepare you for an on-site licensing exam administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
With the proper certification and training, there are numerous positions within the aviation industry that you can secure. The vast majority of aviation maintenance program graduates go on to work for airports around the world making sure that the major carriers are up to speed before take off. But many graduates decide to go into the manufacturing and engineering side of the aviation industry. In this capacity, they help engineers design and improve the airplanes for tomorrow.