Aircraft Fitter (Craft Apprentice) Review

First Year - Attended College on Day Release. Mon-Thur: 7:45-4 and Fridays 7:45-11:45. Start of Year completing classroom assignments and some workshop work. 1day academic classroom work for BTec quals in Maths, Theory of Flight, Business Ops and Health and Safety. Latter of the year working mainly in workshop and continuing 1 day in college. Post Covid - Apprenticeship extended by 1 year. A lot of time on furlough and classroom work was competed online from home for remainder of year. College Work and Experience was all round good. One or two lecturers who were difficult and could be quite through in marking making a lot of work for you at home. Otherwise as you’d expect.

Learned Lots of new skills. Being 16 and fresh from high school that did not offer any engineering subjects. Was first chance to try hands on project work and gain experience using tools and following instructions/drawings. Academic Work extended current knowledge on Maths, widened knowledge in business to a perspective more relevant to current job situation. Health and Safety while lot interesting and quite wordy/lengthy was important for developing my knowledge of the standards and rules that are in place in the industry to maintain safety. Theory of Flight was an interesting subject that give me knowledge of the product and will be beneficial to my work.

Being Fresh from High School and travelling from quite a way meant early starts that took some getting used to. Being unable to drive for the for the first few months as a learner driver meant sharing lifts which was sometimes difficult to organise. Everyone on the course was a pleasure to meet and work with. People of all different ages and backgrounds who’s life experience and knowledge of working life prior to there apprenticeship was helpful to me as a first time worker. People were all nice and fun to be around and chat with. Made good friends. Most lecturers were pleasant and offered help where possible. TTOs were very good at there job with extensive subject knowledge and experience at hand to help me along.

Difficult to answer really as Just 6 or so months into the first year COVID flipped everything upside down as everyone has experienced at sometime or another in this past year. With Furlough scheme, working from home and communications throughout it was well handled and enabled us to return to work as soon as was possible in the safest manner. Otherwise well organised and structured.

Not much in the way of positivity, must be said. They tend not get too involved with college affairs however when work is subpar or late they can come down hard on you and little to no misconduct such as bad behaviour or causing unnecessary problem is a very quick way to get shown the exit. As long as keep head down and do what’s expected no issues and employer mostly leaves supporting role to the college staff who are most helpful.

City and Guilds? I don’t think they were at all involved. If this refers to the college, Coleg Cambria, they were very supporting in both academic and practical work, TTOs in particular were very knowledgeable and able to help with all problems including person issue or non-work related issues. Very good experience and very good people. Head of Department was understanding of apprentices as an ex apprentice and was able to offer us support when needed. College handled COVID well.

After briefly working on shift in the factory to start my 2nd year, Most of what was done in college practically and most of the academic doesnt necessarily apply to the job i’ll be doing, few things are relevant and most college work is in light skin and as apppose to the heavy skin dominated work in factory.

Airbus Football Team. Also a college football team. Lots of events from Gen-A for those wanting to participate, often lots of fundraisers and other activities ran. Opportunity to socials with people at the beginning of the course invited apprentices to meet at a social gathering at a bar, unfortunately those of us under 18 and a unable to legally drink weren’t invited.

Yes

While there are some negatives yes, there are plenty of benefits and positives that far outweigh the negatives. The opportunity is good for people the same age as i was when i started coming out of high school, good money for someone of that age is of course a benefit but for older applicants looking for a career change the pay cut can be quite difficult as relayed to me by some of the older apprentices however the outcome is positively worth it. The chance to meet and work with lots of people from different places around the country and of all ages and experience levels is both enjoyable and beneficial.

If like me your coming out of high school and aren’t too big on the idea of going back to do A-Levels and would rather look for something immediately, it doesn’t get much better than Airbus as far as apprenticeships go as indicated by the number of applicants year on year. For older people looking for a career change or still trying to figure out what they want to do if It’s the sort of thing your interested in or would like to try i say go for it, from what i have heard and can see the older apprentices seem to enjoy it just as much as us despite the harsh change of attending college again for the first year the outcome is of course worth it.