Visting Airbus and Ailes Anciennes

The enginerers started Tuesday with a busy schedule. They had their first enginering class at the Institut Catholique de Toulouse (ICT) with Nicolas the teacher. Class started with a presentation about the orgins of flight. It is was very interesting to learn that flight has been always an interest for humans. Many civilizations have expirimented with flight at some point in time. After an extensive dive on the history of aviation, it was time for an activity. The students had to create a glider with a partner. They had one hour to design, test and run their gliders. The conversation and the ideas were different and interesting. The students were focused and engaged through out the activity as proven by the picture below;

After our first class, we took a private bus to go visit the campus of Airbus. Airbus is one of the biggest plane manufacturer in the world. It is made of up of the four main countries in Europe (France, England, Germany and Spain). During our visit we were able to see many parts of the asembly line of a plane. We saw some A350 and A320 planes. We also saw the inconic Beluga which is only used by Airbus to transport many parts of the planes from different parts of Europe to Toulouse for the final assembly. 

Towards the end our day, we visited the Ailes Anciennes museum. This is an outdoor museum where some of the old planes are parked and displayed. Each one of those plane has a unique history. As of the guide told us, "We talk about each of the planes for hours". This museum is a club of old pilots and plane enthusiasts. The students interacted with each plane by going inside the planes and seating on the cockpits. Being able to see the progress of planes was amazing and you can see the excitement of the students as they maneuvered through the planes.