Before joining the world of aviation, Jonathon Parnell was working on an ambulance. Looking for a career change in 2016, he applied to Certified Aviation Services.
“I'd had some basic mechanical background, but nothing in aviation. But they hired me on to give me a shot. I was young and it was exciting to me. I enjoyed it once I got there, I loved the hands-on of it, so I took to it pretty well. It was a great transition.” Parnell described.
He said it’s the hands-on nature of the work that he really took to and still enjoys.
“I like working on things and being able to sit down with the guys, especially whenever I get to do some training and I get to do hands-on with them and take them through the process and just to see them pick it up and understand what we're looking at, it's a great feeling to do that with them,” he said.
He started off doing component work in hydraulics and today is the supervisor of the shop.
“I get to coordinate all the activities for what we're going to work on for the day. I try to keep it up to date with people's OJT to know what they can work on and I do a lot of the training in the shop, try to do one-on-ones with the guys, try to see what we need to do to coordinate between management and them on what needs to go out for the day,” he said.
He said he’s proud that August will be his seventh year in the industry and he’s worked his way up to supervisor without an A&P license.
“There's so much opportunity, there's so many different aspects of aviation. It's not one thing. You can dabble in one field, you can go to a whole other aspect of it. You can even go towards the more business side of customer relations. You can go all the way to line maintenance, to component work. There's just so many aspects. It's such a broad field that you can work in, that there's a good opportunity, there's something that you'll find that you'll really take to,” Parnell said.
