It offers a more secure connection between you and the site/service you're trying to access so that important data isn't intercepted
I would disagree with that. Unless you are using a private VPN between 2 secure endpoints - e.g. home to office or a site-site VPN connecting 2 offices - it is no more secure than a "normal" connection. The VPN in use here sounds like it is just tunnelling data to a different exit point, so as to appear to have a source IP address different to the actual address. Often used to appear to be in a different country, or just to obfuscate the true location for whatever reason.
However, the actual data in transit between the VPN exit point and the destination (PPRuNe in this case) has exactly the same security (or lack thereof) as if it was sent from the true source and since virtually all web traffic is secured (HTTPS) anyway, there is no additional encryption benefit in using a VPN.