The ideal degree course?

[Genghis the Engineer]

I have good reasons for asking this, but if anybody wants them, PM me and all will become (privately) clear.


Let's say you wanted to construct the perfect undergraduate degree course for future aviation professionals. Let's assume that they have left school aged 18, with a good standard of maths and physics, and want the option 4 years later of progressing to becoming either a professional aerospace engineer, or a professional pilot. (Or perhaps for the more gifted individuals, both :O ).

Assuming we're at a high quality university, with good engineering resources, and also access to a competent flying training organisation with the usual GA training facilities - what would you put in that course?

(And what should be mandatory, and what elective?)

G

[Intruder]

It seems you have a Test Pilot School curriculum in mind...

The Aerospace Engineer requirement is controlling here; there is no further academic requirement for professional pilots, unless you want to fold in the ground school requirement for the Commercial Pilot Cert into electives or core.

[Genghis the Engineer]

It seems you have a Test Pilot School curriculum in mind...
Not intentionally, but it's an interesting observation.

Whilst I agree with you that strictly, there aren't any special requirements for pilots at degree level, there is much which might be included to allow people to decide upon their preferred career path, and to prepare them for either route - after-all, an engineering degree is not all of an engineers training, nor in some countries an essential prerequisite to becoming an engineer. Also, there are a fair number of options within the standard aero-eng degree course.

I have my own views on this, but would love to know those of my fellow aviation pros.

G

[Grunf]

Hello. You can check what is done at Embry Riddle since they have all these programs:

- Aerospace engineering curriculum


- Flight test specialization curriculum

- Proff. Pilot curriculum

Otherwise it can go all over the place (my experience from different schools in both Europe and USA/Canada).

You should touch a lot of general mech. Eng. Stuff as prep and then go into more specific aerospace curriculum.

What I mean is go through these sections:

- Aerodynamics (low, high speed)

- Construction and design

- Manufacturing

- Flight mechanics (performance)

- Propulsion (jet engines, rocket engines)

- Stability and control (include aeroelasticity issue etc)

- Equipment (electrical system, hydro systems, combined sys, autopilot)

- Structural analysis (static, fatigue, DTA, FEM etc)

- Material sciences (composite properties, mech of materials)

- Regulatory issues (FARs, JARs etc)

- Navigation

- Other topics in Flight Ops

In my experience I had one or more of courses in these areas plus 2 extra years of general mech engineering (overall 5 years of courses).

You can always pick what you think it is essential for a specific branch from the above list.

Regards,

[Blacksheep]

That list illustrates something that has bothered me for several years. The lack of interest in maintenance by academia - maintenance is ignored and left to the technician or mechanic.

Large commercial aircraft are now mostly maintained under MSG3 Maintenance Programmes, backed by reliability monitoring to ensure the effectiveness of the maintenance programme. It is no longer a matter of stripping an aircraft down and reassembling it with new or overhauled parts. The maintenance engineer must exercise a greater degree of engineering judgment and most of us just don't have the academic training to fit us to that task.

The necessary skills for the new methods are not properly covered in the various license syllabi. We have to develop repair schemes and we do use graduate engineers in the 'back room' engineering offices. Unfortunately, a lack of understanding of maintenance issues often handicaps them. Neither the LAE nor the current graduate aeronautical engineers are ideal for the job. I'd like to see degree courses pay more attention to maintenance issues - the aging airframe, composite repairs, non-destructive testing, engine health monitoring and especially regulatory matters.

In short. Make maintenance a respectable academic subject - or even a complete degree - in its own right.

[Genghis the Engineer]

That, my dear Blacksheep, is a fascinating and very valid point - both for the reasons you make, and also that it would certainly be very helpful for future professional pilots to have a good understanding of the issues and rationale behind maintenance planning.

Not having formally studied the academics of this myself to a particularly high level, can you suggest a good reference or textbook one might use as the basis for such a course within a more general BEng or MEng? Something like this? (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0070482640/qid=1125732061/sr=8-4/ref=pd_bbs_4/104-3732418-6022347?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

And am I right in thinking that you DON'T mean a course like this? (http://www.kingston.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/Aircraft%20Engineering.html) (excellent 'though I'm sure it is). You mean the academic subject of planning, constructing, and making as efficient (from time, cost and safety viewpoints) as possible aircraft maintenance and inspection practices?

G

[enicalyth]

I was born in what today would be called a British Overseas Territory. I received a rather backward elementary education. At fourteen I went to boarding school, passed certificates and unbelievably to me went on to university. Joined the military. Left the military. Flew.

For the first year at University chemistry and physics from school were “reinforced”. Actually it was mostly repetition and I darn near flunked chemistry, my best subject at school, out of boredom.

Theory of Structures commenced at once, very badly taught by a professor. Sometimes the only way to understand is to teach yourself. Sometimes the cleverest man is a lousy teacher.

Year One had both pure and applied maths but the applied maths was so little different from physics that it could well have been dropped. But tradition and obeisance to old Buggins decreed otherwise.

Pure maths continued for three years and went far too far as I then thought. However the student’s subsequent career often takes an unexpected path. Life has shown that the maths only went a little too far but not a lot too far. Sometimes the old farts know more than we think about what we need to lnow.

After boring Classical Physics in Year One came Modern Physics in Year Two. Brilliantly taught and brilliantly coupled with second year pure maths. Just brilliant. When what was “advanced” in one’s youth crumbles into dust, the “basics” had better be the foundation of continued success or else you’re in trouble. This year was well done.

The Second Year included two Humanities options and I chose Economics (Keynes and Cairncross) and Business Law. You need to understand or at least appreciate upwards, downwards and sideways all that goes on in your company, especially finance.

In the second year we studied electrical engineering but for only one year. A big mistake that and very much towards heavy power and sadly not enough into electronics. Very enjoyable lab work most afternoons. Today I would insist that it continue all the way through alongside the big subjects which were mechanical – strength of materials, engineering thermodynamics, structural mechanics and “fluidics”. That trendy term encompassed aerodynamics broadly set in the field of fluid mechanics. Rather badly taught which has always been a hindrance to me.

Third Year saw the passing away of everything except maths and mechanical engineering and set the scene for the Final Honours Year. The lab work was excellent though some of the engines!!!

I’d rate my first year dull, second year brilliant, third year very good and final year as on equal terms with the profs and lecturers in the way we treated each other. So, having had a good career and helped shape to some degree what and how we fly may I suggest

First Year
Mathematics (Pure and Applied)
Physics and Chemistry of Propulsion
Theory of Structures
Electrical Technology
Mechanical Technology
Computer Studies

Second Year
Mathematics of Computation
Modern Physics
Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer
Electronics
Strength of Materials
Fluid Mechanics
(plus two Humanities Options or languages)

Third Year
Control Engineering
Advanced Structures
Advanced Mechanical Engineering
Advanced Electrical Engineering
Fluidics
Engineering Practice

Honours Year
Three from five:
a) Control Engineering
b) Advanced Structures
c) Advanced Mechanical Engineering
d) Advanced Electrical Engineering
e) Fluidics
Chosen Thesis/ Project


Broadly, very broadly it is what I did and the rose tinted glasses are still in their case.

[Blacksheep]

Thats more or less correct Ghengis. I'd like to see something that treats maintenance issues - technical support, planning, scheduling, airworthiness and other 'backroom' elements - with more academic rigour. At the moment we either have to take aeronautical or electrical/mechanical engineering graduates and indoctrinate them into aircraft maintenance or pick out the most thoughtful and analytical LAEs and train then up. Neither means of formation is ideal. We need maintenance professionals who undergo intellectual development targetted at the maintenancer field from the outset. With apologies to yourself, I find current aeronautical graduates too manufacturing focussed.

I can't recommend a single source reference book - I struggled along blindly myself, finding my own way with short courses here and there and picking relevant information from various aeronautical and electronic texts as well as avionic equipment and test equipment manufacturers manuals. My academic knowledge of statistics and experiment design came in useful too, while training courses on flight recorder analysis and accident investigation were useful in setting up flight data analysis in our own Tech Services section.

Maybe I've just found a useful project for my retirement in three or four years time? :hmm:

[Confabulous]

In my humble opinion, it's all well and good to teach the theory or flight/ops/met etc, what is additionally needed is some form of airmanship module - essentially go over the most relevant accident/incident investigations and set projects to find out how certain accidents could have been avoided - personally I think a lot of pilots (professional or not) are re-inventing the wheel by taking years to discover all the nasty lessons. There's got to be a better way.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Maybe I've just found a useful project for my retirement in three or four years time?

Give me a shout when you do, maybe I can arrange supervision for a PhD :cool:

[PhilM]

http://www.glam.ac.uk/coursedetails/685/96

Is a very good course (on it myself). You get a BSc Hons degree (think Kingstons is just foundation?), and the B1 Part66 License.

The course is based around the license really, I'd personally like to have seen something a bit more like "PPL training" included aswell, Navigation, more in-depth aerodynamics etc.....I believe there is somewhere up north (Newcastle rings a bell?) that includes PPL on one of their courses.

I am going to end up as an engineer, but dream is to be a pilot, oneday maybe! (Finances are the problem, career as an engineer should sort that). Would be great if there could be a course that bridged the gap between Pilot and Engineer diceplines a bit more.

[Genghis the Engineer]

I know of three UK based engineering degrees that include a PPL - Liverpool (in my opinion the best set up at present), Sheffield (getting there), and Brunel (announced but not yet started running, I have inside knowledge that it should be pretty good). Leeds also offer a BSc in "aeronautical science" with a PPL, but for my taste their academic syllabus is (relative to the others) a bit lightweight, and isn't accredited by the RAeS.

In the US there are several "aeronautical science" degrees, which basically consist of a lightweight-ish aeronautics course (not really intended to produce engineers - but extremely knowledgeable pilots), and a full CPL/IR. The best known (and possibly best) provider of these is Embry Riddle at Daytona Beach, FL and Prescott, AZ.

G

[PhilM]

Forgot to mention the Glamorgan course is RAes approved :ok: (Which is needed if you plan on joining the RAF as an EngO, must be an accredited degree!).

Genghis, what path would you recommend taking to flight testing? I'd love to do something along those lines oneday, but B1 (and hopefully B2 aswell) first, then ATPL....

Sorry its a bit off-topic!

[Genghis the Engineer]

Genghis, what path would you recommend taking to flight testing? I'd love to do something along those lines oneday, but B1 (and hopefully B2 aswell) first, then ATPL....

My recommendation would be either...

(1) Military + Test Pilot School, or

(2) MEng (Aero), try to get a job in a flight test department as an FTE; if you want to become a TP work on the flying as you go along.

There are quite a lot of threads in the "Flight Test" Forum on this subject.

G

[Seat1APlease]

I would suggest two other skills.

Firstly social skills, and whilst I'm not the biggest fan of CRM because is is impossible to run a 2 man crew on one man one vote principles, if two people are working together whether relining a wing fuel tank with a rubber liner, or doing a let down into an airport with terrain problems then communication is vital.

The second one which I think is even more important is logic/problem analysis/common sense call it what you will. You can be able to qoute every manual to the finest detail, but when it all turns pear-shaped then there is no substitute for quick thinking and common sense. How you teach or acquire those skills though is a different question.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Seat1APlease Would you consider that extensive learning through (aerospace related) team based study/design/research projects would go a long way towards that?

G

[Seat1APlease]

--Would you consider that extensive learning through (aerospace related) team based study/design/research projects would go a long way towards that?--

It would certainly help with the CRM/communications skills but I suspect that whilst problem solving/ analytical skills can be improved with practice, that there are some people who are born with those skills and some who are a lost cause no matter how much they try. You can try and cover every eventuality by study and research into every previous incident but no two events are identical and reacting quickly and logically is not easy to teach.

['India-Mike]

Genghis

Your original query refers to an 'aviation course'. Most if not all UK universities currently offer aeronautical engineering; avionics; or mechanical engineering with aeronautics degrees. None of which I would consider, with or without a PPL, to be aviation degrees.

Question - are you proposing a new degree, or do you mean 'aeronautical engineering' when you say 'aviation'? Not being pedantic, but the distinction is an important one.

[Genghis the Engineer]

A fair and reasonable question I-M.

In a nutshell, a university who shall remain nameless (but not one either you or I are normally associated with) has decided to create such a course, they've produced a prospectus, decided in (back of envelope depth) a syllabus, and decided that it should both be RAeS accreddited as an Aero-Eng degree, but also include a JAR-PPL and equip it's graduates to head for any of an Aeronautical Engineering career, a professional piloting career, or related engineering work (airport design, ops planning, etc.). They've elected to call this "Aviation Engineering".

Now, having done so, they've asked me to try and make this work! Not easy, but I enjoy a good challenge.

But in answer to your specifics, yes I am in essence proposing a new degree - and I do believe that this will be possible. I just don't believe that it'll be easy - for either the students or those running the course. In fact this may well be the most difficult thing I've done yet if I see the challenge through.

G

['India-Mike]

Genghis

Good - with the exception of accreditation as an aero eng degree (due to what I'd perceive as a diluted level of engineering), an excellent idea. Aviation as an activity can in some areas require degree-level qualified personel. A beefed-up Embry-riddle model might be a good starting point, as well as the available UK-based maintenance degree programmes. My institution tried to get involved in such a programme some years ago, but it failed to materialise due to differences between the partners. A great shame.

However, there is no place for a PPL as a module or course in either a new aviation degree or a more traditional aero. eng. degree. The material simply doesn't meet the academic levels required of a degree. I must emphasise that's not to say a PPL or other flying qualification isn't important to providing a rounded aeronaut, it's just that it isn't academically advanced enough. That's not snobbery, or elitism, it's just the way it is.

By all means offer a PPL with the degree, but it shouldn't appear on the degree scroll as an academic element of the qualification.

Having said that, some of the best engineers I know are pilots. Some of the best pilots I know however aren't engineers or have a university degree. Offering a flying qualification as currently done in the UK in the context of the degrees on offer is just marketing. And don't expect rounded individuals just because a complete aviation programme (with or without flying) has been put together. Students want to pass exams. They compartmentalise ie they won't use the knowledge gained in one subect or year to help them in another. A flying qualification would become just another module to pass (albeit a rather sexy and appealing one), and its relevance and context would either be lost on them, or of no significance in the context of the exam-passing sausage machine that masquerades as 'education' in the UK just now.

The most important element of your course will be staff. You'll need aeronautical enginners who work in academia, not academics who've done aeronautical engineering. UK universities struggle to recruit the former as we now always have one eye on the Research Assessment Exercise - currently it'd be madness for a UK university to go out and recruit from industry engineers who don't have a raft of scholarly journal publications obtained in the current assessment period, and who can rapidly generate research income from external sources. How many engineers out there in industry have that kind of CV? (yourself excluded, of course!)

[Genghis the Engineer]

I'm more or less with you I-M, but not totally.

Whilst a PPL is not of sufficient academic rigour to count as part of a degree pass, nor are many of the subjects as taught in the first year of any Engineering degree. However, like those, there's potential to build upon them with a view to teaching subjects in a way that just wouldn't be possible otherwise.

To offer an obvious example, flight mechanics - taught far too often as a purely academic subject with no relation to the actual task of flying an aeroplane. (I recall getting into a thoroughly enjoyable debate on this subject during my PhD transfer viva with an academic who knew far more than I about the maths of flight mechanics, but had never actually learned to fly an aeroplane - we came at it from totally different viewpoints). Similarly there is much potential to involve students in real-aeroplane project work to a degree which wouldn't be possible without their having developed a good knowledge of flying. But I think it must be important that the PPL is a means to an end within the degree, and not an end in itself.

As to the last point, that will be a difficult challenge, as will persuading academics who don't understand either aviation or engineering to start thinking in terms of flying machines, not bits of discrete structure and code. I have an idea as to the nature of the problems here, but as yet, not enough answers.

G

[Master Yoda]

Is this a worthwhile course then?

More business management than aero/technical but PPL and ATPL are part of the course.

LINK to the course (http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ug-prospectus-2005/courses/aviation-management-and-operations.cfm)

['India-Mike]

This may or may not be a good course, but it's the sort of innovation in aeronautics/aviation that the traditional aeronautical engineering universities just aren't taking up. I used to look down my nose at this sort of thing - I don't any more.

Arguably, the real test of the value of a degree is whether or not it has been placed before an appropriate accreditation body - if not, why not, and what the outcome was. For example, with aeronautical/avionics engineering degrees the appropriate bodies are the RAeS, the IMechE and the IEE. Full accreditation, for example, of an MEng degree allows the holder to progress towards CEng status without the extra postgraduate examinations called 'matching sections', so accreditation is an important attribute of a degree programme.

[Seat1APlease]

Have you seen the UNI of Salford course?

http://www.cse.salford.ac.uk/courseview.php?level=undergrad&view=Engineering&ref=77

Whislt I accept that PPL ground school doesn't really equate to degree level when you get onto the ATPL ground school then it is/was quite challenging.

I don't know if they still include it but things like the TPhigram and thermodynamics, and working out compressibilty errors ias/cas/ras differences did keep us out of the pub for a few nights.

[SR71]

For the aviation enthusiast, maybe the three career streams that presently exist, do so for good reasons?

Route 1: On the one hand you have the traditional academic route, of which I am a product - BEng Aero Eng, PhD Unsteady Aerodynamics. These courses (claim) to equip you with the necessary mathematical/analytical/computational techniques that form the basis of many of the major technological advances of the 20/21st centuries. You need a degree of mathematical ability to succeed.

With this type of qualification you can get a job at GE doing CFD, or Ferrari working in their wind tunnels, or with Airbus looking at FBW development.

Route 2: Alternatively, you can aim for a wrenching qualification. Some of the most fun I ever had was post BEng wrenching on light pistons and DC3's. My degree didn't help one iota for this work. PT6 hot section inspection? Re-hanging C206 control surfaces? Re-riveting a B18 wing underskin? Huh?

All news to me. No differential equations to solve in this job.

To succeed in this discipline a mechnical inclination would seem to be a good pre-requisite. You're the kind of guy/gal who took things apart as a kid, works on your own car, improvises repairs to your PC when a motherboard fails...

You can get a job with Marshall Aerospace with this qualification or Storm Aviation.

Route 3: And then you have wannabe pilots.

I only ever wanted to be a pilot. The other qualifications I accumulated along the way were only circumstantially acquired.

I'd love to know the demographics behind the average qualfiying fATPL holder these days, but I'd hazard a guess, many of them have already been down Route 1?

It would appear to me, initially at least, that if you try and amalgamate all these streams, you'd wind up diluting the course and de-valuing each one of the disciplines as a result?

An engineer doesn't need a PPL. A mechanic doesn't either. A pilot doesn't need a BEng.

I would of course, justify my experience of all three streams by saying they've added to my experience base and made me a better pilot as a result, but I'd hate to think of a graduate with an Aviation Studies degree thinking that because he'd got a PPL he'd have a head start towards a fATPL.

Knowing how the airlines think these days, he'd only have to enroll in an Integrated 509 course anyway whereupon he starts from scratch again like I did. Time wasted?

I try not to think of my 10 years in streams 1 and 2 prior to arriving in the flightdeck as wasted, but thats not always easy.

Of course, the problem with this, is that because this is the way the system works, you have to make the decision early in life facing the very real possibility that you'll get the decision wrong and have to start again in the stream you really do want to be in!

An anecdotal story that perhaps justifies my dilution theory....

When I first started at flight-school, during my ground school Flight Dynamics class, after an auspicious start, the instructor went on to talk about Lift Pressure.

Being fairly confident that seven years at University had taught me the difference between a Force and a Pressure, I proceeded politely to tell him there was no such thing.

Eventually I gave up, figuring, I'd best keep my mouth shut for the duration of the course, for fear of acquiring a name for myself.

:ok:

[Groundloop]

City University's Air Transport Engineering degree includes two modules called Maintenance Technology and Maintenance Planning, including MSG3. Also included are modules on Systems Safety and Reliability and Airline Economics. This course has been around for a long time with support, originally, from BEA/BOAC and later BA. It was designed directly for airline engineers.

http://www.city.ac.uk/ugrad/engineering/airtransport.html

The standard Aeronautical Engineering programme includes the Maintenance modules as options.

From this year both courses now offer an Aircraft Operations and Performance elective which covers day to day airline planning and operations.

There is also a degree which includes a full frozen ATPL - Air Transport Operations.

[Blacksheep]

I'm familiar with that one Groundloop. It was developed in cooperation with BEA/BOAC/BA (in its various manifestations) as the academic part of their graduate apprenticeship scheme. Graduates from the scheme got their hands dirty in BA's hangars then after qualifying stayed in the maintenance side of BA's E & M Division until they acquired experience and licences. Then, if they were lucky, they moved into the engineering side of E & M as Development Engineers. It was a good course, but has been overtaken by time. It is thin in some of the areas that I think are now needed in Development/Tech Services/Planning.

There is a huge gap between SR71's Route 1 and Route 2 that most people outside the tech support area of Air Transport operations don't appreciate. We don't need specialists in unsteady aerodynamics, Ferrari's wind tunnels or the Airbus FBW design office. Nor do we need former spanner wielders like me, who've read a lot of interesting books. It is an area that has become a specialism of its own. Which universities include the finer academic points of Quality Assurance auditing in an aeronautical degree course? Or organizational psychology - the very basis of Human Factors in Engineering? From what I've seen, and admittedly I've not seen as much as folk like Ghengis who are involved in both sides of aero-engineering, there's a widening gap between academic theory and industrial practice that disturbs me greatly.

[Genghis the Engineer]

On that last point Blacksheep, I agree totally - my only point would be that it's far from limited to maintenance. A friend of mine, who is a highly respected (ex-industry) academic and writer of textbooks put his finger on it in my opinion, when he said that the basic problem is a loss of concentration upon the flight vehicle.

If you start at the vehicle (be it an airliner, a light aircraft, a military helicopter, or even a satellite), identify the core skills needed to (a) design it, (b) build it and (c) operate it - then you should have the right basis for training aerospace professionals in general, and engineers in particular.

Sadly, for engineering training, that link was probably initially lost 20 years ago and they've been drifting apart since.

G

[Blacksheep]

Tut,tut! See, you left out (d) maintain it :)

[Genghis the Engineer]

Operate = flying + maintenance.

G :p