20 October 2022

“Recently, I went on a connect day to the Virgin Atlantic (VA) Hangar at Heathrow Airport. We first embarked on a tour around the hangar where we learnt about the different components of an aircraft function and what the mechanics must do to fix them. We also got a taste of what kinds of jobs a graduate engineer at VA would do and an overview of what a typical day would look like for them.

They demonstrated the different maintenance jobs the crew works on board the plane and they even brought an A-340 plane into the hangar to show us. Only when I got the chance to sit in the cockpit of the plane did I realise just how complex the control panel is.

The highlight of the day for me was when I got to take a picture sitting inside the jet engine of the plane. Meeting the apprentices at VA opened my eyes to what a great alternative it is to university, as it allows you to experience multiple areas of engineering from fixing the jet engine to working in stores.

I particularly enjoyed learning about the process of how the cabins were designed, learning about this really intrigued me and inspired me to research further into design engineering as a future career path.

At the end of the day, we took part in a team competition, where we built the optimal paper airplanes that flew the longest distance; we used the knowledge we gained during the day about the aerodynamics of planes and how things like moving the centre of mass of the plane through outputs a higher pitch.

Thank you to all the people at the VA Hangar that made the Connect day as beneficial and engaging for us as possible!”