Writer

Amy Laboda

Troy Lewis was honored this week during Heli-Expo 2016 with the Rolls-Royce Excellence in Helicopter Maintenance Award, as part of HAI’s Salute to Excellence, which recognizes and honors those who present the helicopter industry in its best light. The awards cross the spectrum, from communications, law enforcement, safety, and maintenance to humanitarian service and lifetime achievement.

 


Lewis is the area training manager for engine manufacturer Turbomeca USA. He began his aviation maintenance career in 1986 with Arlington, Texas-based Inter-Turbine as a quality control inspector. He then joined Turbomeca’s quality department. During his tenure there, he was instrumental in establishing a number of programs that have saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 


“When I started my career at Turbomeca USA in 1991 it was a much smaller company,” Lewis told AIN. “This gave all of us an opportunity to learn many aspects about our engines as we all had to cover many different areas of the MRO and production process.”

 


During 20-plus years at Turbomeca, Lewis has trained thousands of aviation maintenance technicians annually, both at the company’s Arlington training center and at customers’ maintenance facilities. “We have a great instructor network, and with that I think we all bring a great deal to the table and mentor each other,” Lewis said.

 


He became a customer-training instructor in 2008, and in 2014 was named lead instructor. As lead instructor, in addition to his regular teaching duties, Lewis is responsible for instructor audits, recurrent training and qualifications and for mentoring instructors in Turbomeca’s training network. “I enjoy when I can pass along historical information to a fellow instructor to give them a background of why a service bulletin or technical document came to be on an engine,” he said.

 


Lewis earned the Rolls-Royce award this year because of his knack for communicating clearly, sensing each student’s knowledge level and getting the information to them in a professional manner.

 


“The advice Igive to students and those I mentor is that you must have passion. If you have a great passion for your job then it doesn’t really feel like a job at all,” Lewis said. “I feel very strongly about a famous philosophical quote: ‘What I hear I forget; what I see, I remember; what I do, I understand.’”

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