London South East Colleges student gets airborne with valuable work experience

Aircraft enthusiast and Aeronautical Engineering Level 3 Diploma student Beth Booker has just landed herself an amazing opportunity to work alongside a group of experts at one of the region’s top aviation service providers.

The 17-year-old from Sevenoaks will be starting her one-day-per-week work experience programme with Falcon Flying Group in the new year. This follows a recent visit to the firm’s HQ at London Biggin Hill Airport where she met the owners and engineering team before sitting down to devise a full and personalised training schedule together.

Chief Engineer at Falcon, Ashley Soares will be supervising Beth and ensuring she learns the all-important specialist skills and techniques in the maintenance of light aircraft. He said:

“Beth is entering a brilliant and very rewarding career and will be taught many specialist techniques involved in the servicing and maintaining of a range of different aircraft. She will get to know every single component that makes up an aeroplane – from the wings, the landing gear, propellers, tail fins and rudders, fuelling systems, engines, electronics, cabling and all cockpit controls and functions – there’s a lot to learn.

“Beth will be trained by myself and our top technicians – the experience she gets here will be incredibly valuable to her. We are very excited to be welcoming her in the new year and look forward to helping her career take-off in a big way.”

Beth has been attending the Biggin Hill Festival of Flight as well as the Eastbourne Air Show each year for as far back as she can remember. Living so close to Biggin Hill has meant she has flying in her blood and has a family member who currently works in the aerospace design sector. She says:

“At school, all I wanted to do was to work in this industry. I couldn’t wait to get started. Fortunately, a course at my local College started last year and after visiting one of the College’s open events, I found out all about it. It almost felt like the course had been designed around me as it included everything I wanted to learn. Now I have secured this work experience opportunity, I really feel like I have my head in the clouds. Thank you to the work experience team and my tutors at the College for finding it for me.”

Qudoos Yousuf is the Head of Engineering at the College’s Bromley Campus and Curriculum Lead for our forthcoming London Aerospace Technology College. He is keen to enable as many students as possible to undertake meaningful work experience during their time at the College and is working hard to establish many more industry links within the region. He says: 

“Our curriculum has been designed with the help of industry experts and includes a decent helping of real working experience with real employers and clients. This is because employers look for as much on-the-job training as they can find from candidates when recruiting. Obviously, whether a student progresses onto an apprenticeship, into a full-time post or goes to university when they leave us, we have to ensure they are work-ready. We can only do this with the involvement of established firms such as Bombardier, Rolls Royce and many others.”

If you are interested in a career within the aviation and aerospace industry, London South East Colleges has a great range of courses and apprenticeship opportunities on offer.