Indian students send highest number of entries for Airbus competition

A few years from now, the Airbus aircraft you board could well be partially designed by Indian students.

A student competition organised by the European aircraft manufacturer has seen the highest number of entries so far from India — more than 50 out of 250 teams.

The competition, the first of its kind, calls for students to give their ideas on areas like aircraft parts, materials and systems. Eighty per cent of Indian applications for the competition are from the Indian Institutes of Technology in Delhi, Kharagpur, Chennai and Mumbai. Registration ends on December 1. The winning team will be announced at the Paris air show on June 19 next year.

Airbus will select 100 teams in the first round through an online quiz on the aviation industry and this shortlist will eventually be whittled down to five finalists. An Airbus coach will help the teams upgrade their projects. The winning project could be incorporated in one of Airbus’ programmes later.

“This competition is a great and exciting way to get people interested in considering aviation as a career. As an innovative leader we are always on the look-out for ideas of innovation and for people who think differently,” said Airbus spokesperson Justin Dubon.

Airbus has a 70 per cent market share in terms of aircraft flying in India and the country is one of the key centres for design and development of the A350, the company’s answer to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Designing work for the A350 is the next project for the Airbus Engineering Centre India (AECI), the company's high-tech aircraft component manufacturing facility in Bangalore, which began operations in April last year. The Centre has 35 engineers and the number is expected to grow to 300 in the next four years.

Airbus has been looking at various ways to use India for both component manufacture as well as leverage its research and development potential. The first manufacturing agreement was with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) in 1998 to make doors for the A320.

In the past, Airbus also outsourced engineering projects to other Indian companies like Infosys, which participated in the designing of the A380, HCL, CADES, Satyam and Quest.