Methodology: How We Build the Aviation Maintenance School Directory

Where the School List Comes From

The directory starts with the FAA's own list of certificated aviation maintenance technician schools, exported from the FAA AV-Info facility dashboard with the location type set to Part 147 mechanics schools. The export we use was retrieved on September 22, 2026 and holds 225 school locations.

Each location has its own FAA certificate, so a college with two airport campuses appears twice. We show the certificate number and address the FAA publishes. We never publish the personal names, emails, or phone numbers of the FAA contacts listed in the export.

How School Locations and Distances Are Mapped

School addresses were geocoded with the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder. When an address did not match, we used the Census ZIP code area centroid instead. 225 of 225 schools have coordinates; the others still appear on their state page, without distances.

Every distance on the site is a straight-line distance in miles, not driving distance. City pages measure from the principal city's Census Gazetteer point and list FAA schools within 100 miles, nearest first. When no school is that close, they list the nearest three. State pages also list schools across the border within 100 miles.

How Schools Are Matched to IPEDS

Tuition, graduation rates, and awards come from IPEDS, the federal college data system. We matched FAA schools to IPEDS institutions by name and city within each state, then reviewed every unmatched college by hand using FAA DBA names and known branch campuses. 102 of 225 FAA locations matched.

IPEDS reports at the institution level, so tuition and graduation rates describe the whole college, not only its aviation program. Many private FAA-approved (Part 147) schools do not report to IPEDS at all; their pages simply leave those figures out. We track 194 IPEDS aviation maintenance programs, CIP codes 47.0607 to 47.0609, plus bachelor's and master's programs under 49.0104.

How Program Facts Are Verified

Credentials, ratings, program length, schedules, start dates, GI Bill approval, and published costs come from each school's own website. 224 schools have a verified program page. For each fact we record the page it came from and the quoted wording that supports it.

Costs are shown with the period the school gives, such as total program or per semester, because schools price differently. 53 schools publish a cost we could verify. When a school does not publish a fact, we leave it out rather than guess.

Where Pay and Job Figures Come From

Wages and employment come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release, at the national, state, metro, and industry levels. We use Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians (49-3011), Avionics Technicians (49-2091), Transportation Inspectors (53-6051).

Job growth and yearly openings come from Projections Central long-term projections for 2024 to 2034. BLS does not publish every figure for every area; when a cell is withheld, the page omits it. Pay figures describe the occupation in that area, not what any school's graduates earn.

How Airports and Employers Are Chosen

City pages cover 106 metro areas, chosen from the largest U.S. metros by Census population estimates, plus smaller metros added for their aviation maintenance activity. Airport data covers 156 commercial airports and comes from FAA enplanement and all-cargo files for calendar year 2024. An airport is assigned to a metro by its city name or, failing that, by distance of 50 miles or less.

We name 189 maintenance employers across 106 metros. Each one is listed only when a public source confirms the facility, and we record the supporting quote. We do not claim that any employer is hiring or report headcounts unless the source states them.

How FAA Rules Are Checked

Certification rules come from 14 CFR Part 65 and Part 147 on eCFR, and from FAA.gov. Our fact file holds 112 verified statements, each stored with its source link, the quoted text, and the date retrieved. Workforce figures come from FAA Civil Airmen Statistics and the ATEC Pipeline Report.

Rules change. The Part 147 rewrite of 2022, for example, removed the old fixed curriculum hours. If a regulation has changed since the retrieval date, the regulation wins.

How the Best Aviation Maintenance Schools Ranking Works

Only FAA-approved (Part 147) aviation maintenance schools that report to IPEDS are scored, because the completion, tuition, and awards inputs come from IPEDS. Schools without an IPEDS record still appear in every state, city, and school page; they are not ranked.

Each eligible school is scored out of 100 points. Graduation rate, cost, and program size are scaled between the lowest and highest value among the scored schools, so the leader on a factor earns its full points and the lowest earns none. A school that does not publish an input earns no points for it. The score is not re-weighted around the gap and no value is estimated.

Graduation rate is the one exception at the top of the scale. The scale stops at the 95th-percentile graduation rate among scored schools, and every school at or above that rate earns the full completion points. Without the cap, one small school that reports a 100% rate would squeeze every other school's completion points into a narrow band.

In this edition the cap is a 67.2% graduation rate, reached by five of the 100 scored schools.

IPEDS in-state tuition leaves out mandatory fees, and some states bill most community college charges as per-credit fees. An IPEDS tuition under $1,000 a year is treated as incomplete: the school is scored on its published cost when it has one, and otherwise earns no affordability points.

Cape Cod Community College, for example, reports $576 in tuition to IPEDS but charges $262 a credit hour in tuition and required fees, so its cost is 70 credits at that rate, $18,340.

What the Ranking Does Not Score

• School-Reported Pass Rates. Schools publish FAA test pass rates over different periods and test mixes, so the figures are not comparable from one school to the next.
• School-Reported Job Placement Rates. Placement rates are self-reported with different definitions and follow-up windows, so they are not comparable either.
• Sponsorship or Partnership Status. A sponsored listing never changes a score, a rank, or which schools are eligible.
• Reputation Surveys. No survey or opinion input is used. Every input is a published figure.

Updates and Corrections

We update the FAA school list, IPEDS data, and BLS wages after each source publishes a new release, and every page shows the date it was last updated. If you find an error, such as a closed campus or a changed program, email hello@savomediagroup.com with the page and a source. We correct verified errors and note the date.

Sponsored listings, when present, are labeled and never change a school's data, score, or rank. See about this site for our editorial standards.