Airbus has announced its third biennial Fly Your Ideas global student competition that focuses on six sustainable industry themes for the aviation industry. The winning team will be awarded €30,000 and the runner-up team will receive €15,000.
The competition is open to college students belonging to any discipline. They have to form three- to five-member teams and will have to focus on six key challenges facing the aviation industry to promote a greener future. Initiatives for conservation of energy and management of traffic growth will be some of the challenges.
The Fly Your Ideas competition forms part of the Future by Airbus programme’s “Talent” pillar. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is supporting the endeavor.
As part of the competition, the teams will have to identify methods of increasing source harvesting of energy, sustainable renewable fuel sources and ways of reducing energy consumption. The other competition theme will deal with efficiency in terms of making it eco-friendly. This may be achieved through improving aerodynamics, reducing weight and improving reliability and maintenance.
In terms of traffic growth, concepts for improving air traffic control, ground operations and aircraft mission management are invited. Further, strategies for reducing costs incurred for manufacturing, operations, disposal, equipment and materials are encouraged.
Ideas which contribute to increasing the efficiency of the aviation industry are also invited.
The deadline for registration is 30 November and the competition is to be judged in June 2013. A panel of industry and Airbus experts will be judging the competition running through three progressively challenging rounds.