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Pratt & Whitney's Customer Training Centers deliver a comprehensive learning experience to a global market of aviation students. Whether time allows for a two-hour interactive distance learning session or 20 days for a heavy engine maintenance training course, P&W offers an effective menu of maintenance, engineering, and leadership.
Continuous education and certification are vital to any evolving career. Pratt & Whitney (P&W) manufactures a vast array of engines and the company's catalogue of courses can be as valuable to those just entering the workforce as to management with a lifetime of experience. P&W's two Customer Training Centers (CTC) in East Hartford, Conn. and Beijing, China hold classes that educate and enlighten.
AM spoke with Laura Holmes, general manager, P&W East Hartford CTC, and Robert "Mac" Maciorowski, training operations manager from the same facility, to learn more about what that location has to offer. Holmes has worked with P&W for nearly eight years, and has a background in marketing, sales and customer service. She earned her bachelor's and master's in business and has always worked in an industrial manufacturing environment.
Maciorowski manages the instructors. He has his bachelor's in electrical engineering and a master's in technical management and has worked at P&W for 18 years. He came to the training facility about six years ago when he taught on the engineering side. The bottom line of what both Holmes and Maciorowski had to say was said by Holmes, "We have two world-class training facilities, but we'll train you wherever, whenever you want and will make the course fit your needs."
The Facilities
The CTC in East Hartford, Conn. is an historic site founded in 1935. It was built as a service school and was bought by P&W while still being used as an experimental test hangar. Engines were created, installed and flown out of 400 Main Street by such aviators as Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. As the aviation industry evolved, P&W grew and required additional space. The company bought the test hangar and, more than a decade ago, carefully renovated the building for its usage as a CTC.
As part of the site's living history, the East Hartford facility displays Lindbergh's desk in an on-site museum and photos from the early years line the...