Aviation Laser Academy

Operator qualification and Laser Safety Officer certification for Class 4 laser cleaning.

Cold-process surface preparation. No chemical strippers, no abrasive media, no measurable heat rise when operated inside qualified parameters — validated by Textron, and documented for your Part 145 records.

Which one do I need?Verify a credential

23
Modules: 66
Instruction hours: 8
Systems in the field: 0
Warranty failures

Delivered on site to

Netflix Aviation — Hangar 43, Burbank

Training delivered on site to a corporate flight department's maintenance team, covering landing gear components including cadmium-plated steel hardware. Netflix Aviation operates an FP-300 in that fleet today.

Landing gear is the hardest case in the curriculum — high-strength steel, cadmium plating that vaporises at a temperature an ablation site reaches trivially, and no margin for getting thermal input wrong.

8
Systems in aviation: 0
Warranty failures

The technology is thermally benign. The operator is the variable. This program is what controls the variable.

Which one do I need?

Pick by the role you actually fill. Every package is self-contained — there is nothing to buy first and no order to work out.

You own the laser and run your own shop.

You are the technician — and because ANSI Z136.1 requires every Class 4 operation to designate a Laser Safety Officer, you are legally that too. Most independent operators are here.

→ Complete Aviation Laser Program

$2,995

You run the laser on aircraft, for an employer or a repair station.

Someone else holds the LSO appointment. You need the aviation work and the safety foundation, not the programme administration.

→ Aviation Laser Technician

$2,295

You carry the safety responsibility but may never touch a laser.

A director of maintenance or safety manager who holds the appointment while technicians work under it. You need the calculations and the programme, not substrate metallurgy.

→ Laser Safety Officer Certification

$1,295

You run a Class 4 laser, but not on aircraft.

General shop work, or a helper who works near the machine. The safety foundation on its own.

→ Laser Safety & Fundamentals

$895

Already bought a smaller package? What you paid is credited in full against a larger one, and the modules you have already passed carry over.

What’s in each package

The programme is 22 modules in three parts. Each package contains whole parts — the safety foundation is built into every one of them.

Part 1 — Laser Safety Foundation

Modules 1–6

Physics, hazard classification, eyewear, effluent and industrial hygiene, controlled areas, emergency response. Equipment-agnostic.

Part 2 — Aviation Technician

Modules 7–16

Aerospace substrates, clad layer integrity, coating systems, corrosion, composites, the regulatory framework, records, process qualification, hangar operations and business practice.

Part 3 — Laser Safety Officer

Modules 17–19

The role and its authority, hazard evaluation mathematics (MPE, NHZ, optical density), control selection, programme administration, audits, training and medical surveillance.

Part 4 — Master Trainer

Modules 23–26

The instructor's authority and its limits, teaching safety-critical material, practical assessment and examination integrity, and programme administration including credentialing, remediation and revocation.

Package	Safety Foundation	Aviation Technician	Laser Safety Officer	Hours	Price
Laser Safety & FundamentalsGeneral Class 4	✓	—	—	17	$895
Laser Safety Officer CertificationSafety Officer	✓	—	✓	28	$1,295
Aviation Laser TechnicianAviation Technician	✓	✓	—	45	$2,295
Complete Aviation Laser ProgramOwner-Operator	✓	✓	✓	55	$2,995
FeatherPulse FP-300 EndorsementFP-300 Owners+ FP-300 modules 20–22	✓	—	—	25	Included with system

The Complete Program is $700 more than the Technician package and adds the whole Laser Safety Officer certification. If you own your laser, you need both anyway.

“Don’t I have to be an A&P mechanic?”

No. And the people who believe you do are leaving work on the table.

You do not need to be an A&P mechanic to perform laser coating removal on aircraft. Under 14 CFR §43.3(d), a non-certificated person may perform maintenance while supervised by a certificated mechanic who personally observes the work to the extent necessary and remains readily available. Under Part 145, a repair station's technicians need not hold individual certificates at all — only supervisory and inspection personnel must (§145.153, §145.155); everyone else must simply be trained and qualified under the station's program. The real gate is not your certificate. It is approved data for the process, and a training record that survives an audit.

What this credential is

The Aviation Laser Academy issues an industry operator qualification. It is not an FAA certificate and confers no FAA authority. What it does provide is the documented, auditable training record a certificated mechanic or Part 145 repair station needs in order to qualify you on a laser coating removal process under their approved data and training program (14 CFR §145.151, §145.163).

What this program covers that others don’t

Heat is the damage mechanism everybody names. It is not the one that most often destroys an airframe.

Clad layer penetration

Not thermal

Alclad 2024 and 7075 carry a thin commercially-pure aluminium cladding that provides galvanic corrosion protection for the copper-bearing core. Ablating through it is a material-removal failure that occurs at parameters nowhere near a concerning bulk temperature, leaves no visible indication, and cannot be undone.

Cumulative thermal input

Thermal

Single pulses are benign. Pass count, dwell, overlap and repetition rate accumulate. Thin skins and honeycomb face sheets reach limits far sooner than an operator's intuition suggests.

Surface roughening outside specification

Not thermal

Ra outside the specified band compromises adhesion of the replacement coating system and can act as a fatigue initiation site on a fatigue-critical member.

Composite matrix degradation

Thermal

Resin degrades well below the temperature at which anything visible happens. Fibre exposure or matrix burn-back on a structural laminate is a repair, not a blemish.

Selective-removal failure

Not thermal

Stopping short leaves primer that compromises the new coating system. Going long takes cladding or base metal. The endpoint is a judgement the operator makes hundreds of times a shift.

Bondline and sealant contamination

Not thermal

Ablation products redeposit. A contaminated faying surface or bondline fails later, somewhere else, for reasons nobody connects back to the paint shop.

The exposure nobody is controlling

Ablating legacy aviation coatings aerosolises hexavalent chromium from chromate primers and cadmium from plated fasteners. OSHA 29 CFR §1910.1026 sets a permissible exposure limit of 5 µg/m³ for Cr(VI) with an action level of 2.5 µg/m³, and §1910.1027 governs cadmium. Extraction, filtration, respiratory protection and exposure assessment are not optional good practice — they are the enforceable law that most laser cleaning operations are currently violating without knowing it.

Taught in the field, not just written down

This curriculum is the instruction already being delivered to operators running these systems commercially.

Netflix Aviation

Hangar 43, Burbank, California · 2025

Training a corporate flight department's MRO team on landing gear

Netflix Aviation operates an FP-300 in its corporate aviation fleet maintenance operation. Training was delivered on site at Hangar 43, covering laser cleaning of landing gear components — including cadmium-plated steel hardware — with emphasis on monitoring substrate temperature and cumulative thermal input in real time using non-contact IR measurement.

Landing gear is the hardest case in the curriculum. The components are high-strength steel, frequently cadmium plated, and cadmium vaporises at a temperature an ablation site reaches trivially — which makes it both the sharpest thermal-control exercise and the clearest demonstration of why 29 CFR 1910.1027 applies to this work.

Curriculum demonstrated

•Module 4 — cadmium effluent and exposure control
•Module 7 — high-strength steels and cadmium plating
•Module 14 — substrate temperature verification during work
•Module 24 — on-site demonstration and supervised operation

Written from the field, not from a textbook

Eight FeatherPulse systems are deployed and working in aviation MRO today — to our knowledge the largest working aviation fleet of any laser cleaning company in the United States. Zero recalls. Zero warranty failures. The curriculum is built from what those eight machines and their operators have actually run into.

Important

Aviation Laser Academy is a private training provider. This credential is an industry operator qualification and is not issued, approved, recognised or endorsed by the Federal Aviation Administration. It confers no authority to approve an aircraft for return to service. Authority to perform maintenance derives from 14 CFR Part 43 and Part 65, and the acceptability of any process for a given aircraft derives from approved or acceptable data for that aircraft. Holders remain responsible for operating within their own authority, their employer's procedures, and applicable federal, state and local law.