Five days a week, Mr. Blackman, who turns 92 next month, drives himself from his home in Queens Village to Kennedy International Airport long before sunup and well before his 5 a.m. start time. His job as crew chief is to review paperwork detailing what maintenance has been completed and what remains to be done on 17 jetliners that are kept overnight at the airport. Then, wearing a lime-green vest and clutching a paper containing a list of planes and service requests, he starts his walk through a massive hangar.
Lunch is at 10 a.m., followed by more walking and more consulting until it is time to go home at 1 p.m.
“Every day the job is different,” Mr. Blackman said. “You’re not doing the same thing repetitively, and that’s good. If in my journey around the hangar I see something I can help on, I do that.”
When Mr. Blackman started his career in 1942, he was 16 and a recent graduate of Aviation High School, which at the time was in Manhattan. According to the airline, after a teacher sent a note explaining his aptitude for metal fabrication, he earned 50 cents an hour as an apprentice in the sheet metal shop.
“The first airplane I worked on was very crude; it had none of the systems modern airplanes have,” Mr. Blackman said of the flying boat. “Through the years they learned — better regulations, better inspections. And the people who work in this business are, for the most part, very competent people.”
On Tuesday, American Airlines held a celebration for Mr. Blackman, during which he was presented with a plaque from Guinness World Records for the longest career as an airline mechanic. Mr. Blackman’s 75-year loyalty to one employer and a single career exceeds by more than a decade a similar record set in 2012 by Ronald Byrd Akana, who joined United Airlines in 1949 and had the longest career as a flight attendant, and Robert Reardon, who was the oldest active flight attendant when he retired from Delta Air Lines at the age of 90 in 2014.
American Airlines officials are careful to note that for his safety and the well-being of others there are limitations to what Mr. Blackman can do. Besides no longer being allowed to perform physical tasks that might harm him, his work is carefully supervised by a crew co-chief.
“I’d like to do more if I were allowed to, but that’s a thing of the past.” Mr. Blackman said. “At this point in the game, I don’t think it would be good to go back to doing manual work. I don’t think I’m capable of it.” Nevertheless, Mr. Blackman said he did not have any plans to retire.
While Mr. Blackman does not turn a wrench the way he once could, what he has to offer is incalculable, said Robert L. Crandall, who was president of American from 1980 to 1998.
“He represents a valuable institutional memory that says, ‘This is how we do it at American. This is our commitment to quality,’” Mr. Crandall said. “This is how you pass it on to the next generation. He’s the guy who sits with the new kids at lunch and passes it on.”
“His work ethic is something I’d love every one of my 368 mechanics here to have,” said Robert Needham, Mr. Blackman’s boss and the station manager for American Airlines New York maintenance base.
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