CHAPTER 12 

Epilogue 

        It has been my goal in this book to provide some information regarding the life of an airline mechanic.  I hope that aspiring aircraft mechanics will find this information useful.  If some much needed change occurs as a result of this book then so much the better, but I seriously doubt that anything will result from this writing.  Aviation in this country has become mired in the same mud that threatens to choke the life out of most that is good in this country.  That mud is called bureaucracy.  It is lethargic as a sloth and resistant to change.  It yields to change only when its own existence is threatened. 

        This book was also written to inform the public about airline maintenance.  There has been very little written on this subject that has been written in layman's terminology that someone who has not been trained could understand.  If success is measured by accomplishments then I suppose I have been successful because I wanted to be an airline mechanic and I wanted to work on the Boeing 747.  The only problem is that I thought other things would come to me as a consequence of accomplishing those goals and this hasn't happened.  I thought that if I was a good mechanic I would eventually get a job for an airline, buy a house and settle down.  I saw a long career with one airline followed by an equally long retirement as my possible future.  Now after five years in the business those things are as far away from me as when I began and the future appears to hold only more of the same.  Because of these things I must look at other possibilities for what I seek and I do so with tremendous disappointment.

For questions or comments about this web site contact: jcoghill2@cox.net