Karen Magnussen: An Aviation Star

Karen Magnussen took the red-eye flight from Las Vegas to Daytona Beach last night and showed up for work at the hangar with a concussion and a bruised rib. She was tired but happy to be back in Florida's humidity because the dry Las Vegas desert heat took a toll on her. She found the weather harder to take than her job as a roller derby star on TNN's Roller Jam.

In addition to starring on Roller Jam and enduring the occasional but inevitable injury, Magnussen is also a volunteer youth speed-skating coach and an airframe and powerplant mechanic. Would she give up any of her activities? No, "I just don't have any free time," she quipped. "There really is not a typical day for me -- something special is always popping up -- there's always something unusual."

Looking at the two photos of Magnussen, one might leap to the conclusion that she really does wear different hats. Her roller derby job, which included filming 26 episodes for the TNN cable television channel last year, is quite different than her A & P job at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

But even her full-time A & P job is divided into two parts: warranty manager and aircraft technician. "When I took the [Embry-Riddle] job, we had 15 new Cessnas, so my job was half parts tracking and half hands-on maintenance," said Magnussen. Her job has evolved to about 80 percent warranty work because the university now has more than 50 new single-engine Cessnas. But she still loves hands-on maintenance of the university's fleet.

"I really like working with the instructors and students when they have a problem," she explained, "because I can better understand what is happening on a day-to-day basis with the fleet. There is a great satisfaction of a job well done and completing timely repairs. And when a service bulletin comes in, I can go see the fix, work on a couple, and then file the warranty claim."

The parts warranty side of her job involves a lot of careful tracking. "When a part is defective, I decide if we can get money from it," she said. She and a coworker, J.C. Martinez, developed a claims database last summer that includes all the pertinent details she needs, from labor costs associated with a claimed part to part number and shipping cost. She specified what the database should include and Martinez wrote the electronic program.

"In one year we saved more than $1 million by claiming Cessna and Piper parts covered under warranty," she revealed. This year that figure might not be as high because some of the Cessnas will fall off warranty at the end of 1999.

"The whole department is computerized and we track everything electronically. We even order parts on the computer," she said.

Because all of the computer programs are linked, Magnussen can see not only the status of claimed parts, but also any other aircraft data.

Linking her two jobs, plus volunteer activity and a personal life seems to be a breeze for Magnussen.

Since 1997 she has served as the assistant coach for a youth (9 to 15 years old) in-line speed-skating team. Through this activity, she heard about a competition in Florida for Roller Jam. "It's roller derby for the new millennium," she said, "like roller derby from the 1970s but with inline skates."

Magnussen tried out for Roller Jam at a Sanford, Fla., track and was selected. "We trained for five months and then taped 26 episodes," she said.

She and her 14-member team, the New York Enforcers, began taping the second season in Las Vegas June 27 to July 5. Magnussen, while on vacation from Embry-Riddle, starred in 10 of the 16 shows. TNN plans to broadcast another 26 episodes this year.

"Thank goodness I have a flexible schedule because I have no free time," she said. On top of her A & P job and Roller Jam work, she found time recently to marry Christian Sarna, a Trans States Airlines pilot and Embry-Riddle alumnus (BASC'94).

Flying is why Magnussen originally entered aviation. She dreamed of captaining an airplane, so after graduating from high school in Brooklyn, N.Y., she enrolled in Embry-Riddle to become a pilot and earn a degree in aeronautical science.

She was off to a great start in her aeronautical career when air sickness set in during flying lessons. A doctor determined she suffered from vertigo, so she lost her medical.

Magnussen knew she wanted to stay in aviation, and a friend suggested she enroll in an aviation maintenance class to learn how airplane systems work. "I decided to give it a try and enrolled in an A & P class." That class captured her attention and prompted her to switch her aviation career. She graduated in 1997 with degrees in aviation maintenance technology and management of technical operations.

What's Magnussen's long-term goal? "I'd like more experience on general aviation aircraft, and then I would like to become a safety investigator for the NTSB," she revealed. "The general public's perception is that general aviation aircraft are dangerous. I'd like to help change that."

By Lee Ann Tegtmeier
(Printed with permission from the August 1999 issue of Aviation Maintenance.)