Top 12 Aircraft Inspector Skills to Put on Your Resume
Building a sharp, trustworthy resume as an aircraft inspector means showing the skills that keep metal, composites, wires, software, and people safe. Focus on the capabilities hiring managers scan for first: proven inspection methods, real regulatory fluency, and hands-on mastery with modern airframes and avionics. In a crowded hangar of candidates, clear evidence of precision and judgment is your lift.
Aircraft Inspector Skills
- NDT Techniques
- FAA Regulations
- EASA Standards
- Quality Assurance
- Corrosion Detection
- Avionics Troubleshooting
- Boeing 787
- Airbus A320
- Composite Materials
- Ultrasonic Inspection
- X-ray Imaging
- FOD Prevention
1. NDT Techniques
NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) methods let inspectors evaluate structure and systems without harming the part. Ultrasonic, eddy current, radiographic, magnetic particle, dye penetrant—each tool unveils different flaws: cracks, corrosion, disbonds, porosity, heat damage, hidden fatigue.
Why It's Important
NDT uncovers defects early, preserves airworthiness, and supports sound maintenance decisions. It keeps aircraft reliable without needless teardown.
How to Improve NDT Techniques Skills
Sharpen your craft and your results improve fast:
Adopt advanced modalities: Phased array UT, digital radiography, shearography for composites. Expand beyond the basics to boost detection probability.
Earn progressive certifications: Advance levels across multiple methods and keep currency with formal refreshers and practical exams.
Standardize digital workflows: Use calibrated scanners, consistent setups, and structured reporting with traceable data sets.
Calibrate and care for gear: Routine checks, reference standards, and maintenance reduce false calls and missed indications.
Benchmark with peers: Participate in round-robin evaluations and case reviews; compare signals, techniques, and call criteria.
Lead with safety: Radiation, high voltage, confined spaces—apply strict controls and PPE every single time.
How to Display NDT Techniques Skills on Your Resume
2. FAA Regulations
FAA regulations define inspection, maintenance, and airworthiness requirements in the United States. They shape how you sign off work, document findings, and determine return-to-service.
Why It's Important
Regulatory fluency protects crews and passengers, reduces findings during audits, and keeps operators compliant without guesswork.
How to Improve FAA Regulations Skills
Study with intent: Know the parts that govern your scope (e.g., 14 CFR relevant to maintenance/inspections), plus current airworthiness directives and special airworthiness info bulletins.
Track changes: Monitor official notices and policy updates; maintain a change log and revise procedures promptly.
Use scenario drills: Practice applying rules to real cases—major vs. minor repair classification, return-to-service authority, documentation accuracy.
Document cleanly: Plain language, complete references, traceable signatures. Auditable records win every time.
Engage in safety reporting: Encourage non-punitive reporting and trend analysis to catch systemic risks early.
Align with global requirements: For cross-border operations, understand how FAA and international standards mesh, and where they don’t.
How to Display FAA Regulations Skills on Your Resume
3. EASA Standards
EASA standards set EU-wide rules for certification, maintenance, and continuing airworthiness. Inspectors working with EU-registered aircraft live by these requirements.
Why It's Important
Consistent compliance ensures safe operation, smooth oversight, and mutual recognition across member states and beyond.
How to Improve EASA Standards Skills
Stay current: Review applicable regulations and AMC/GM guidance; capture revisions and update local procedures quickly.
Deepen SMS integration: Use risk-based audits and data-driven surveillance to focus on highest hazards.
Strengthen audits: Apply robust internal audits, root-cause analysis, and corrective action verification.
Share across borders: Compare practices with partner authorities and operators to harmonize interpretations.
Adopt inspection tech: Drone-assisted visual checks, digital records, and condition-based monitoring where permitted.
Close the feedback loop: Collect input from pilots, engineers, and QA to refine procedures and training.
How to Display EASA Standards Skills on Your Resume
4. Quality Assurance
QA binds standards to outcomes. It’s the system that ensures inspections, tests, and signoffs consistently meet aviation requirements.
Why It's Important
Strong QA prevents repeat defects, exposes process gaps early, and keeps certificates and approvals intact.
How to Improve Quality Assurance Skills
Refresh the knowledge base: Train on evolving regulations, OEM instructions, and human factors.
Modernize the toolkit: Deploy borescopes, digital torque and calibration control, and electronic task cards.
Run a disciplined QMS: Align with ISO 9001 and aerospace standards such as AS9100; drive corrective and preventive actions with data.
Audit with purpose: Risk-based schedules, layered process audits, and verification of effectiveness—not just box ticking.
Promote safety culture: Just culture, clear reporting channels, and visible leadership support.
Measure and improve: KPIs for findings, escape rates, rework, and on-time compliance—review and adjust quarterly.
How to Display Quality Assurance Skills on Your Resume
5. Corrosion Detection
Corrosion hides in seams, lap joints, wheel wells, lav service bays, bilges, and composite-metal interfaces. Detect it early; stop it spreading.
Why It's Important
Unchecked corrosion erodes structural margins, triggers costly repairs, and can ground fleets.
How to Improve Corrosion Detection Skills
Hunt systematically: Use targeted visual checks with lighting and mirrors; deploy borescopes for cavities and ducts.
Use the right NDT: Eddy current for fastener holes, UT for thinning, thermography or tap tests for composites, radiography for hidden volumes.
Apply proven protections: Corrosion preventive compounds, sealant restoration, drainage and ventilation checks—document intervals and results.
Control environments: Moisture management, desiccant use during storage, and strict post-wash drying practices.
Train to the threat: Recognize forms (pitting, exfoliation, galvanic, filiform) and their telltale signs; study OEM manuals and corrosion control circulars.
How to Display Corrosion Detection Skills on Your Resume
6. Avionics Troubleshooting
Avionics troubleshooting isolates faults in navigation, communication, surveillance, power distribution, and display systems. It blends logic, data, and discipline.
Why It's Important
Electronic reliability underpins flight safety, dispatch rates, and crew confidence. Good troubleshooting prevents parts-chasing and repeat write-ups.
How to Improve Avionics Troubleshooting Skills
Master the references: Aircraft maintenance manuals, wiring diagrams, component maintenance manuals, MEL/CDL usage—know them cold.
Instrument the problem: Use buses and BITE data, FDR/CFDR downloads, and logic analyzers where applicable; verify power, grounds, and bonding first.
Think methodically: Reproduce the fault, narrow the system, test simplest causes first, confirm with known-good swaps only when justified.
Control configuration: Track software/firmware baselines and service bulletins; mismatches create ghosts.
Simulate and drill: Practice faults in training devices or digital twins; build personal playbooks of symptoms and fixes.
Debrief and share: Capture lessons learned; circulate tricky cases to reduce future troubleshooting time.
How to Display Avionics Troubleshooting Skills on Your Resume
7. Boeing 787
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is a long-haul, twin-aisle jet with extensive composite structures, advanced electrical systems, and efficient engines. Variants (787-8/-9/-10) seat roughly 240–330 passengers depending on configuration.
Why It's Important
New materials and systems bring superb efficiency—and unique inspection needs around composites, lithium-ion batteries, and high-voltage architectures.
How to Improve Boeing 787 Skills
Know the materials: Composite repair criteria, lightning strike protection, and moisture mitigation—understand allowable damage limits and repair schemes.
Understand the electrics: High-voltage distribution, multiple generators, battery system safeguards; follow strict isolation and test procedures.
Track ADs and SBs: Keep a live register of 787-specific directives, mod status, and configuration control per tail number.
Use the right NDT: Phased array UT and thermography for composite structures; verify calibration blocks and scan plans.
Cabin and systems nuance: Environmental control, pressurization, and bleedless architecture—inspect with system interactions in mind.
Practice battery safety: Storage, charging controls, venting paths, and post-event inspection steps—no shortcuts.
How to Display Boeing 787 Skills on Your Resume
8. Airbus A320
The Airbus A320 family is a short- to medium-haul, narrow-body workhorse with fly-by-wire controls and broad global support.
Why It's Important
Its ubiquity means inspectors encounter it often—speed and accuracy come from type-specific familiarity.
How to Improve Airbus A320 Skills
Fly-by-wire focus: Inspect control computers, backup modes, and flight control law protections with careful functional checks.
Avionics and displays: Keep up with upgrades across generations (classic to neo) and verify software baselines and interoperability.
Fuel and hydraulics: Check pumps, valves, and contamination controls; pay attention to repetitive write-ups in these systems.
Retrofits and efficiency: Sharklets, weight-saving kits, and cabin mods—verify installation quality and paperwork alignment.
Structured training: Type-specific courses, troubleshooting labs, and differences training across variants sharpen your edge.
How to Display Airbus A320 Skills on Your Resume
9. Composite Materials
Composites blend fibers and resins to deliver high strength, low weight, and corrosion resistance. Think carbon fiber laminates, sandwich panels, and fiberglass structures.
Why It's Important
They change how damage appears, propagates, and is repaired. Inspectors must read the subtle signs—barely visible impact damage, delamination, crushed cores.
How to Improve Composite Materials Skills
Decode failure modes: Learn impact signatures, moisture ingress, and thermal damage indicators; compare with metallic corrosion mindsets.
Refine inspection methods: Tap tests, thermography, UT (including phased array), shearography—select by structure and defect type.
Standardize repairs: Ply orientation, cure cycles, vacuum integrity, and heat control—document everything with full traceability.
Use hybrids wisely: Mixed materials invite galvanic risk; verify isolation layers and fastener compatibility.
Condition testing: Understand environmental conditioning, allowable rework limits, and acceptance criteria per OEM specs.
How to Display Composite Materials Skills on Your Resume
10. Ultrasonic Inspection
Ultrasonic inspection uses high-frequency sound to reveal internal flaws—thickness loss, cracks, disbonds, porosity—without opening structures.
Why It's Important
It spots what eyes and fingers cannot, sustaining structural integrity with minimal disruption.
How to Improve Ultrasonic Inspection Skills
Advance your technique: Move beyond straight-beam to angle-beam, TOFD, and phased array where appropriate.
Dial in setups: Proper probe selection, couplant choice, gate placement, and calibration blocks matched to the part.
Read signals accurately: Practice on known-defect samples; build intuition for noise vs. real indications.
Use smart software: Apply imaging, sizing, and data logging tools for consistent, repeatable results.
Maintain equipment: Routine checks, battery health, firmware updates, and transducer care keep results trustworthy.
How to Display Ultrasonic Inspection Skills on Your Resume
11. X-ray Imaging
Radiography creates images of internal structures—welds, castings, honeycomb cores—revealing cracks, voids, and foreign material without disassembly.
Why It's Important
It catches hidden defects and verifies repairs, especially in dense structures and bonded assemblies.
How to Improve X-ray Imaging Skills
Go digital where possible: Digital radiography speeds feedback, enhances contrast, and simplifies archival control.
Use dual-energy wisely: Differentiate materials in complex assemblies, especially composites with metallic inserts.
Tune image processing: Apply filters, edge enhancement, and region-of-interest tools to surface subtle defects.
Leverage CT when needed: 3D reconstructions expose geometry and internal flaws that 2D can miss.
Calibrate and protect: Regular equipment calibration and strict radiation safety protocols are non-negotiable.
How to Display X-ray Imaging Skills on Your Resume
12. FOD Prevention
FOD Prevention keeps foreign objects out of engines, bays, and systems—and off runways and ramps. It’s vigilance made visible.
Why It's Important
One stray fastener or tool can cost millions, or far worse. Prevent it once, never chase it later.
How to Improve FOD Prevention Skills
Train everyone: Teach recognition, reporting, and removal. Make FOD awareness part of every briefing.
Inspect relentlessly: Structured area sweeps, tool control programs, shadow boards, and serialized kits.
Keep it clean: Housekeeping rules, bag-and-tag for removed hardware, and point-of-use parts control.
Use technology: FOD detection systems, sweepers, and lighting improvements on ramps and in hangars.
Measure and motivate: Track FOD finds, identify hotspots, and recognize teams that drive incidents down.
How to Display FOD Prevention Skills on Your Resume
