Blue Ridge Community College aviation program to double in class size

Lyra BordelonStaunton News Leader
Aug. 11, 2026, 4:31 a.m.

Blue Ridge Community College is doubling its aviation maintenance program capacity to meet a high demand for technicians.
The program boasts a 97% success rate for graduates earning their FAA certification, one of the highest in the country.
Virginia is also investing in a similar program at Danville Community College, with Blue Ridge staff assisting in its development.
WEYERS CAVE – Blue Ridge Community College is taking center stage in Virginia’s efforts to train more airplane repair technicians.
For the past three years, the Blue Ridge Community College Aviation program had a limit of 25 students per class. Kevin Campbell, the Blue Ridge aviation maintenance instructor and program manager, said there are over 340,000 technicians certified for plane maintenance and repairs across the country, but only about 162,000 are working. A significant portion of these working technicians are expected to retire in the next five years.
“We have to replace those technicians with these guys and girls, so the demand right now is extremely high,” Campbell said. “For every technician that retires, it takes four or five replacement technicians, because you take someone who’s been working for United [Airlines] for 40 years, that’s a lot of experience going.”

This is one of the reasons why Blue Ridge is expanding its program, doubling the student cap from 25 to 50 for the upcoming fall class, a significant step toward expanding Virginia’s plane maintenance workforce.
One of those students this year is Devon Wichael. She attended an internship through Valley Career & Technical Center while still in high school, watching the crew as they built a “little RV-12 plane.” After graduating, she took a year to take a few college courses, then got into the Blue Ridge Community College Aviation program.

Despite falling in love with the field during that first internship, she explained it was still “very intimidating” to get involved.
“It seems like you have to have so much experience,” Wichael said. “I had basically done nothing … with engines before I came in here. And now, I can find top dead center on a cylinder. I’ve learned so much in just under a year, but it’s doable … as long as you have the drive and the grit to do it, you can.”

On Aug. 5, Wichael wasn’t the only student studying in a hanger at Shenandoah Valley Airport, one of the program’s classrooms. Ryan Moran was previously a mechanic, working on heavy equipment, tractors and lawnmowers. He also worked on natural gas and oil well drilling in Texas. His previous experience gave him a reference point while learning some of the material, but the program showed him the day to day of plane repair was significantly different to tractor or car repairs.

“The largest difference between aviation and … like your typical technical field, like if you’re going to be a mechanic, [is] in this industry, it’s very heavily regulated,” Moran said. “There’s only the right way. Most of your clientele that you’re gonna come into contact with isn’t gonna be concerned so much with … the cost of doing it versus if it’s done correctly.
“[For example], if you’re working on someone’s tractor, it’s not really the same. They’re just like, ‘oh, I haven’t really taken care of it for a year, I know it needs this, I know needs that, I don’t have any money, can you fix it tomorrow?’ Aviation has the polar opposite of that. The only thing they really care about is if it’s done right … it’s very nice where it’s regulated, ‘this is what you’re gonna do, this is the only way to do it.’”

Wichael and Moran were preparing to take their final written, oral and practical exams Aug. 5. The exams were Blue Ridge’s version of the Federal Aviation Administration’s test for a Mechanic’s Certificate with Airframe and Powerplant. Because Blue Ridge’s version of the test was more difficult than the FAA’s, they were more worried about the finals than the test that would determine if they could work in the field.
“We have about a 97% success rate with this program now,” Campbell said. “So we’re the highest in the state of Virginia. We’re among the highest in the East Coast. We’re among the highest in the country. So 97% of our graduates, not only graduate the program, but they get their certification.”

Blue Ridge isn’t the only place where the program is expanding. The Danville Community College’s burgeoning aviation maintenance program was financially supported by the Virginia General Assembly, which invested about $1.8 million in the program between fiscal years 2023 and 2024.
Campbell and Blue Ridge staff have been involved in setting up the Danville program, and part of the invested funds came back to Blue Ridge for new training equipment and tool kits.

The expanding program means the college is looking for more instructors, positions the community college is still looking to fill. Campbell himself is a 2009 graduate of the program. He joined Blue Ridge to lead the program in 2022 and now gets phone calls from former students going on to work for NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, roller coaster parks, BMW and Mercedes. Campbell described how “humbling” it can feel like to see students get their certification, then come back and tell him what they’ve been working on since earning it.  

“It makes me feel really, really good because I know that we’ve done something a lot of programs can’t do,” Campbell said.