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Understanding how automation changes work — task by task, with the evidence shown and the uncertainty admitted.

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On this pageWhich technologiesHow it got hereMethod and sources
Occupations›Aircraft maintenance technician›How we know

Aircraft maintenance technician — how we know

The page itself gives the judgements. This one gives what they rest on: which technologies bear on the work, how the estimate moved since language models reached the public, and the method behind both.

Assessed
2026-09-30
With evidence
3/5
Verified events
7

Which technologies matter here#

Four separate signals. They are deliberately not added together — a job exposed to two technologies is not twice as exposed.

Physical automation
Scheduled inspections and checksBorescope and non-destructive inspectionTroubleshooting and repair
Cognitive automation
Scheduled inspections and checksBorescope and non-destructive inspectionSigning off and return to serviceRecords and maintenance planning
Process & self-service
Signing off and return to serviceRecords and maintenance planning

How it got here#

The index is not a static number. This is where it would have sat at each capability checkpoint since ChatGPT — reconstructed, and labelled as such.

Reconstructed · platform inferenceEstimated today for each past checkpoint — not measured at the time. 20 → 30.
1007550250
Aircraft and avionics mechanic and technician employment will grow 6 percent from 2025 to 2035, with about 13,100 openings a year, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimatedGE Aerospace says its AI blade inspection tool halved inspection times for one engine type, from 3 to 1.5 hours, and is extending it to more enginesDrone inspections after lightning strikes were added to the maintenance manual for Delta's whole mainline fleet, with technicians and inspectors judging airworthiness from the images123456789not assessed
2022 H22024 H2Now

—— this stretch contains a verified event- - - no event in this stretch — reconstruction only0 = no task exposed, 100 = every task exposed

● 3 verified events for this occupation, plotted at the date it happened — the parts of the line near a marker are anchored to something checkable.

Starts at 20 because maintenance records, planning software and fault reporting from aircraft were in use before this chart begins, while the inspection and repair themselves were hands-on. It rises slowly as drones and AI enter inspection and borescope review, and stays low because the rules recorded here keep the approval for return to service with certificated people and the repair work stays physical.

12022 H220General-purpose text generation reaches the public. Before this point, exposure came from automation that was already deployed — OCR, RPA, machine vision, self-checkout, dispatch algorithms. ChatGPT research preview (2022-11-30) ↗
22023 H121A general model that passes professional exams. First-draft quality crosses the threshold where professional work starts using it. GPT-4 (2023-03-14) ↗
32023 H222Vision input, long context and tool calling. Models can be pointed at documents and connected to systems, which is what moves process work rather than writing work. GPT-4 Turbo:128k 上下文、视觉、工具调用(DevDay) (2023-11-06) ↗
42024 H124The same capability gets much cheaper and faster. Nothing new becomes possible; a lot becomes affordable at volume, which is when deployment decisions change.
52024 H225Reasoning models that work through multi-step problems, and the first models that operate a computer by looking at the screen. The second one is what reaches software-operating jobs. OpenAI o1(推理);同期 Claude 的 computer use 进入公测 (2024-09-12) ↗
62025 H126Agents begin operating real software end to end rather than producing text for a person to paste. This is also when the first public reversals appear — organisations that automated and partly undid it. Claude 3.7 Sonnet 与 Claude Code:混合推理 + 命令行编码代理 (2025-02-24) ↗
72025 H228Long context and tool use become the default rather than a feature. Capability gains continue; the visible constraint shifts from what models can do to liability, procurement and cost. GPT-5(2025-08-07);Claude Opus 4.5(2025-11-24) (2025-08-07) ↗
82026 H129Long-horizon agents land inside specific industry workflows. Adoption becomes sector-specific rather than general. GPT-5.5:「专为实际工作打造」 (2026-04-23) ↗
9Now30The current assessment — this point is the impact index published on the occupation's page, so the curve is anchored to a number the site already stands behind. Worth noting for the flat curves: in the same weeks, a research preview of a shared specification for AI agents to operate physical devices was opened to research labs and manufacturers. That is the first capability class pointed at the physical occupations whose lines here barely move. GPT-6 Astra(2026-09-03);Claude Fable 5.1 / Mythos 5.1(2026-09-01);Model Hardware Standard 研究预览(2026-08-27) (2026-09-03) ↗

A flat line is not a forecast of safety. It says which tasks automation has reached so far — the occupations that moved least here are the ones where the constraint is physical or regulatory, and both of those can change.

Written about this#

These pieces argue from the same records this page holds, and each of their sections names what it rests on.

  • AI in skilled jobs: what it does now, and who still signs
  • AI regulation and jobs: what the EU AI Act already requires

Method and sources#

Assessment date
2026-09-30
Basis of the task judgements
3 evidence-backed · 2 platform inference · 0 not enough evidence
Verified events
7

How we assess an occupation →

← Back to Aircraft maintenance technicianThe other layer: every task, one by one →Skills, knowledge and related jobs (O*NET) →