2025 Aircraft Maintenance National Selection Competition
Saturday, August 30th 2025 – Woodbourne Air Force Base, Blenheim
What does an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer do?
An Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (AME) plays a crucial role in maintaining aircraft in an airworthy state. The AME has to apply their skills and work professionally to ensure the safety of all who fly in or work with the aircraft. AMEs work in a variety of businesses and across a wide range of aircraft types. They can apply their core skills of; inspection, component replacement, troubleshooting, maintenance, repair, modification, and overhaul to differing aircraft types, systems and technologies to meet the relevant manufacturers or regulators instructions. The requirements of the role involve completing each job to an airworthy standard, as quickly as possible, as an individual or part of a team.
Challenge yourself!
WorldSkills competitions provide an opportunity for you to measure yourself against other Aircraft Maintenance Engineers and to push yourself to see just how good you can be. As there are a myriad of possible systems and technologies in aircraft maintenance we try and keep the competition tasks as generic as possible, so you don’t need to have specific system knowledge of the aircraft or component we use. The WorldSkills Aircraft Maintenance competition cycle runs over two years. For the current cycle we are holding our National Selection competition in Blenheim on 30th August 2025 and our National competition in Christchurch in November (TBC) 2025. The International competition takes place in Shanghai, China in September 2026.
Be the best you can be!
Be the best you can be!For the National Selection competition we carry out three tasks in one day of competition for up to 12 competitors. These include an aircraft daily inspection, engine component change and a sheet metal fabrication task. At the two day National competition we increase the complexity of the same three tasks and add a fourth task. The International competition runs to four days of competition and can include tasks such as component replacement, sheet metal fabrication, engine borescope inspection, flight control rigging, electrical wiring, and aircraft inspection as determined by the skill management team. Competition judges are from aircraft maintenance organisations and training establishments for both National and International competitions.
Enter today!
If you think you have what it takes and want to build on your skills or measure yourself against the best, register for the National Selection competition to get started. If you have any questions please contact me at michael.naus@worldskills.org.nz
Click here to view the competitions rules and FAQs.
A proud history
The WorldSkills competitions began in 1950 and aircraft maintenance was first introduced in 2009. New Zealand first competed in Germany in 2013 and our competitor Michael West earned a Silver medal. We have competed in nearly every competition since and have competed creditably each time, our best result being a Gold medal earned by Jarrod Wood in Abu Dhabi in 2017. For a nation of our size, the results from our competitors reflect amazingly well on the quality of our young engineers and I have been very proud to have supported them in their endeavours. These results also show that our vocational training system is producing graduates with the right stuff.