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Ben, Year 9, is one of our aspiring pilots who we sent off to join the Fantasy Wings programme - eight Saturday workshops to find out more about careers in the aviation industry. Here's his diary from the sessions.

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8^th October 2021 - Getting ready

Mr Allison gave me an invitation to a programme for youngsters like me, called Fantasy Wings.

When I was younger, I used to play games that were based on aviation. It sparked my interest in aeroplanes and I was able to name every commercial aeroplane by their airline companies, for example a Boeing 747 with a British Airways livery, especially the old one, which is my favourite by the way.

So you may be wondering why did Mr Alison give me this invitation to this training? It started in Year 7 when we went to a website called Unifrog. Back then I wanted to be a pilot but that doesn’t seem realistic now for me, so I decided with my parents I should be an engineer in the aviation industry. So, skipping forward to the time I got it, I obviously was excited to go but a bit nervous knowing that I may not know anyone or feared that they might or might not be older than I am, the usual thinking. On the night of the invitation, an email from the Fantasy Wings has reached my mum and we looked at it and it said:

We are emailing to confirm your London Venue for the 21/22 Fantasy Wings programme. Your London Venue is the Main Hall at 65 Queens Gate in Central London. The Address is 65-67 Queen's Gate, South Kensington, London SW7 5JS. The closest tube stations are Gloucester Road or South Kensington which are both in Zone 1.

The only session that will deviate from this will be the Annual Conference in July 2022 which will be in London as shown on your timetable however the Venue will be confirmed in January 2022

Please arrive at the venue on time in preparation for us to sign everyone in and to allow everyone to take their spaces before the session begins. Your first session is in October - please see the dates on the attached timetable. 

We look forward to seeing you in October.

Kind Regards

The Fantasy Wings Team

I thought it was a zoom meeting from what I heard but it wasn’t. So, at that point I was concerned about what I should wear and what to say or do but eventually, we had everything sorted out, so we were ready for the next day. 

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9^th October 2021 - the first session

Saturday morning - coming out of my comfort zone to embrace the society I haven’t seen before. Me and my mum arrived at South Kensington before 8:45 as it was stated. It wasn’t a surprise to meet open-minded teenagers like me, so we waited in the line to get my name checked while parents waited in the café area. They gave us their own made masks and booklets to write notes on from the experiences we’ll have. I went in and sat down for the presentation to begin.

Finally, everyone sat down, and the host began his speech. He warmly introduced himself to us and we had to introduce ourselves to others since it was only once a month session and reminding the readers that it was a massive hall, so it was quite full of people to talk to, but my anxiety only let me to speak to around seven people. The host told us his backstory and how he got here. He told us the upcoming events such as in July for making it to every lesson you will get to fly a plane and will be able to get a Private Pilot’s Certificate from flying that single prop aeroplane.The host told us to think about these questions:         

• What do I enjoy?
• What am I good at?
• What am I curious about?

Then on the talk told us the varieties of work you can do in the industry which I categories in following points.

• Aircraft
• Airline
• And many more 

To work with aircrafts, you need to know the design of the aeroplane, the aerodynamics of it, materials, manufacturing, propulsion, supply chain, technology related content, the systems, including research and development.

For airlines there could be opportunities such as being a pilot, cabin crew that looks after the passengers, customer support that are staff throughout the terminal that help incoming people at the airport, marketing which looks at the stocks of the company airline and deals with it, Operational Ground Staff which are ground crew service that take care of the plane as well as guiding it to park at the gate and many more.

Another part of the airline team is to be compliance meaning to comply and agree with the other person for example British Airways complying with America to have routes arrive and departure there. Lawyers can be there in case there is a lawsuit that some wants to hold on the company of the airline and they can back up the airline for what they did. Data analysts view the data of the airline so that could be one of jobs you can do which has a salary of £92k+. Sales is part of marketing and it’s the ones who sell the ticket at prices and other things that the company has, like the 1st class treatment that cost extra money.

But for all those things to be safe we have especially in Britain we have a CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) which supervises the pilot’s licence and testing of new equipment’s and calibrating’s of navaids.           

After those interesting points, we had a discussion in 11 groups of what to do if we were responding to an emergency landing and this case was a real scenario which happened on Heathrow as a 777 stalled onto the runway in 2008 causing the landing gear to collapse and break, so my response to this was to inform ATC to call Airport Emergency Services and tell the cabin and passengers to brace.

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6^th November 2021 - Engineering

I arrived there as usual but a bit later. The host introduced the speaker, her name was Alice. Alice was an experienced aircraft engineer in the aviation industry at Heathrow Airport. She told us her background story and how inspirational her brother has been to her which boosted her motivation to help become what she is. I learnt from her that to be an engineer in aviation I need to have an engineering degree, A levels in maths and physics, a Maintenance licence and finally volunteering for engineering experience.

To work as an engineer, it doesn’t just mean fixing and maintaining a plane. You can contribute your ideas to the CAA and for that if you want to make your own type of plane it is required you must design a model to get the idea of what you are doing.

• Test the model
• Reflect and redesign for it to have a better flow
• Identify necessary problems and finally find the solution so it can be used

That’s how we evolve in the aviation industry from Turbo prop to Jet engines. Another fact is that the curvier the plane is, the faster the air flow will be, resulting in less air pressure. There is a thing called Pitch, Roll, Yaw where it helps the plane to take off and turn in the air and during landing. After that talk that had a handful of information, we did a competition in groups of 7s or 8s to see whose paper plane flew the furthest and I didn’t win because mine literally hit the celling lights and we made other different types of planes too but that was all from that competition and we sat down after.

The second part of the programme was with Derek, a male. Derek was one on the 1^st black men to fly a Boeing 747 for Virgin Atlantic at the time. In his background story of how he got to that position, he told us a lot about his effort that which encouraged me to know that I could study what I wanted. He recommended that if we are very interested, we can visit the websites below:

• Careers in aerospace
• https://www.prospects.ac.uk/

We finished later and headed home.

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4^th December 2021 - Learning to fly

On this day we had Dihran and Kathan (known as the UK’s youngest flight instructor) for the day. Dihran was a flight instructor for many years who had his trial lesson in 2004. He talked about how to get a Private Pilot Licence and Commercial Pilot Licence.

First, the things required to have private pilot licence is to do 45 hours of flight time mostly during training.

• Learning how to climb and descend mid-air.
• Turning peacefully in the air.
• How to recover the plane from stalling.
• Taking off on the runway and landing the plane safely on it.

Your first solo is when only you are the one learner flying the plane, navigating to where you are meant to go. Through all that, you do a theory exam and radio test to hear your communication skills in the air. Another test is about your body, and it is to check whether you are healthy and fit enough to fly a plane, but one can still be confident and hopeful. You must be 17+ to do it.

If you are interested in becoming a commercial pilot (like many other people) you are required to have 25 hours of flight time with another person because realistically most of your flights will be with a someone you may not know.

• Navigating your way through flight
• Practicing landing and taking off
• Precision flying, that is flying at a steady altitude and not bouncing up and down in the air while its catering time for passengers
• Do emergency recalls so you can know what to do in case of an emergency for example an engine goes up on fire so you could turn the engine off then reboot it again and find a safe place to land. Instrument rating is the examiners testing you on your computing skills in the aircraft for setting of destinations and other requirements.
• 55 hours on the time of flying.
• Instrument flying is flying only with your instruments and your whole view will be covered with black pads or shield so you will be directing the plane to the runway by using only your navigation system which is instrumented by pilots.
• Then the licence skill and medical with 150 hours flying with be the last before becoming a paid commercial pilot.

Dihran ended his speech with his quote saying: ‘’If you get an opportunity, take it then learn how to do it’’

It ended with a round of applause and it was time for the next activity which was to discuss in a group following questions that was on the screen and in one of the questions we added up the gallon of fuel that was needed for a flight, so we did 45 gallons +15 = 60 gallons of fuel in total. After that group activities the youngest flight instructor Kathan was the final speaker and he told us about his inspiration in teaching others to fly.

As I am writing this review, I am glad to meet these motivational people who have come a long way to share their stories with us.

If you are interested in these sorts of careers, please talk to Mr. Allison for further information.

Sincerely

Ben