AME Experience Requirements

Transport Canada's experience requirement for each AME rating isn't a single number — CARs Standard 566's Appendix A tracks several categories separately, and an applicant is assessed against each one individually. Broadly: total experience (maintenance of aeronautical products generally), specialty experience (experience specific to the rating being sought), and civil-aviation experience (experience specifically on civil-registered aircraft, as opposed to military or other work). All three thresholds need to be met, not just the largest one.

Ratings differ in how much total experience they require and how the total is split — the M, E, and S ratings do not all use identical figures, and specific current numbers should be confirmed directly against Standard 566's official Appendix A table rather than a secondary summary.

In general, qualifying experience is hands-on aircraft maintenance work relevant to the rating being sought, performed under conditions where it can be verified and certified — not just proximity to aircraft maintenance, and not purely administrative or supervisory work disconnected from the actual maintenance tasks. Standard 566's Appendix B lists sample maintenance tasks, organized by ATA (Air Transport Association) chapter, that illustrate what counts — applicants need certified experience across a representative selection (not less than 70%) of the applicable items. See our guide to Appendix B for how that task list works.

Approved training can also convert into experience credit — a set number of training hours converts to a month of credited experience, up to a defined maximum, so training and pure on-the-job experience aren't entirely separate tracks toward the requirement.

Standard 566 also defines how part-time work converts into the "months" the experience requirement is measured in, rather than requiring continuous full-time employment — confirm the current conversion figure directly against the official standard, since PassCARs does not restate specific regulatory conversion figures here as fixed.

Because experience is tracked across multiple categories at once, it's worth periodically checking your logged experience against all the relevant thresholds for your rating — not just watching a single "total months" number climb — so you don't discover a shortfall in specialty or civil-aviation experience specifically right when you're otherwise ready to apply. See our AME Logbook guide for how to actually keep that record in a form Transport Canada will accept.