Bryan Swalwell

While growing up, several members of Bryan’s family worked in the aviation industry. Bryan always had an interest in aviation and knew it would be his future career path. Currently, he works in fleet transactions acquiring and retiring commercial aircraft for Southwest Airlines.

Bryan recently came back to visit Spartan College with an engine donation through Southwest Airlines. Bryan recommends Spartan for the amount of knowledge that he received which prepared him to work in the industry.

Transcript:

My name's Brian Swalwell. I'm a fleet transaction program manager at Southwest Airlines.

A lot of my family worked in the aviation industry. My father was in the Navy, so we ended up in a lot of various locations and settled here in the Midwest, right in the heart of the Spartan College country. I've always kind of had an interest here in aviation and knew that that was going to be my path.

My current job in fleet transactions is to acquire and retire commercial aircraft for major airline. I love it for a lot of various reasons, there's a lot of challenges. It allows me to network and work with a lot of different departments within the airline and certainly it's fun to get to tell people that you buy big aircraft and sell them as well.

Getting the opportunity to be part of donating the CFM56 engine to Spartan College from Southwest Airlines is has really kind of been a dream come true for me. I've always wanted to be able to give back to my alma mater for everything that they did, for helping to launch my career in aviation.

Knowledge that I gained here has helped me in numerous different ways as I've gone through my career as an AMT mechanic, as a Quality Assurance inspector, auditor, and also working as an engineer and a maintenance planner. My A&P license that I earned after going to Spartan College has really opened a lot of doors for me.

I would definitely recommend Spartan to others. The amount of knowledge that you gain here really prepares you to get out there and work in the aviation industry. You know, I think that it was probably one of the best decisions that I've made in my career.