Fast 5: Transitioning From Hangar To Classroom At Hawaiian Airlines

Kenny Parker, technical operations training instructor at Hawaiian Airlines, started his career working on Navy aircraft engines before transitioning to his current role teaching technical operations staff at the airline. He spoke to Aviation Week Network on the sidelines of the 2025 Aviation Technician Education Council Annual Conference in Norfolk, Virginia, about the airline’s in-house training operations and the types of unique career paths available in aviation.

What sparked your first interest in aviation and what was your first introduction to the industry?

When I graduated high school, my mom basically gave me three options. She said, “You're going to either get a good job, you're going to go to college or you're going to join the military.” I joined the Navy and [became] an aviation machinist mate. My first tour was on the USS Midway, which is a museum now in San Diego. I started in the jet shop, and I worked on a lot of different type of engines and I began to like it. And once I left Japan, I came to Hawaii and worked on [Lockheed] P-3s for about 20 years.

As I got promoted, I moved into leadership in a management role, and I did that for the duration of my career. I retired in 2017 with 30 years of naval service. And so I said, “Maybe I can go work somewhere and stay on the island,” and Hawaiian Airlines was open, so I utilized my training and essentially did the same thing. I worked with the base mechanics as the production controller, and we scheduled all of the maintenance on our [Boeing] 717s, which are our island hoppers. I did that for about five and a half years before I went to our corporate office and became an instructor. I still get to mingle and interact with the mechanics, but now I'm instructing them.

What inspired you to try out teaching, and what was that transition like working on the aircraft to teaching people to do it?

You learn so many things in the Navy—people skills, leadership—and I basically applied all of that to this new position. I wanted to do something different, because I thought after being a production controller, I had learned as much as I could. I still wanted to progress. I don't like to be stagnant. And once I got into that role, I really started to enjoy that, too, because I get to see, talk to and train the mechanics. They all know me and feel comfortable around me. I didn't know everything, but I learned along the way on how to present, how to project your voice, how to basically command the crowd.

What is Hawaiian’s in-house training operations setup?

We have essentially two buildings. The first building is the maintenance hangar where I started off and right down the street is our corporate office, where we have numerous classrooms that we can utilize to teach our students. We have about eight instructors that teach various types of things. We all take turns now with our recurrent training, such as human factors, fire maintenance, safety and even active shooter [situations]. We have specialized instructors for all of our fleets: The Airbus A330, A321 and Boeing 717s, and then the newest one is the 787. After a year of working [at Hawaiian], I got qualified as a 787 instructor.

We have a number of students that come through from our North American stations, such as LAX, Portland and Seattle, to get specialized training. In any given year, we may have over 200 students that go through various phases of training.

When we have new hires, we like to start them off with our Airbus A321 general familiarization, so they'll do that for about four weeks, and then once they finish, they'll go into the 717 pipeline and do the same thing. At the end, we'll do some policies and procedures so they know the rules, regulations and procedures in our manuals before they go out on the aircraft. [After that] they'll go through what we call operational experience, and they'll spend time with a qualified mechanic to see what it's like to actually go out on the aircraft and do certain types of maintenance. Once they finish that, they'll bid for a shift, whether it could be line maintenance or base maintenance. The majority of them go to line maintenance. It's a little bit more fast-paced because you're talking about the day-to-day operations of the company. If they go to base maintenance, it’s a little bit slower, but you learn more because you’re going from A to Z through all of these inspections that could take anywhere from 30-45 days to complete.

We’ve heard a lot recently about how airlines are now hiring new graduates right out of airframe and powerplant (A&P) school and therefore having to invest a lot in training them to get them up to speed. What is Hawaiian’s approach?

For two years, we've augmented a couple of our instructors to work at Honolulu Community College with the students going through their aviation maintenance technology program. We'll take a certain amount of them, probably about eight students in their second year, and we'll put them in our aviation maintenance apprenticeship program where they will actually be hired by Hawaiian Airlines and work part time, which doesn't interfere with their school. They get to actually work at the hangar. Knowing that they're young, there's mentorship that goes on a lot of times, too, to make sure they're on the right path. [For] a lot of these kids, it’s their first time away from home—not all of them are from Hawaii. Some come in from California or other states, so the mentorship piece is very important in making sure we can set them up for success. Sometimes I’m pulled in and asked to talk to the students or give them a different perspective on how important it is to be an aircraft mechanic and signing your name on that dotted line.

We've been very successful with our young folks. I would say we probably have a 90-something percent success rate on getting the kids through. A lot of them get hired by Hawaiian Airlines once they're done [with the apprenticeship program].

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in aviation but don’t yet know what kind of career opportunities are out there?

I would tell them that having an A&P certification is not only just to work on aircraft. You can work for the FAA. Wind turbines and ships that have powerplant engines also use FAA certifications. A lot of people don't know that. There are so many doors that can open when you have an A&P certification.

We've had some students come through who were flight attendants. We have one right now. He's now an A&P mechanic and he's going to be working for us.