That’s A Wrap on Aviation Week

ARTICLE BY SALIM ROIG / Senior Reporter

PHOTOS BY EMBRY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY

DESIGN BY NOAH COOPERMAN / Staff Reporter

Here at Embry-Riddle, everyone here has one thing in common: we love aviation! In order to help show off just how much this campus loves airplanes, spacecrafts, and everything else related to the aerospace industry, the College of Aviation hosts their annual Aviation Week celebration each Spring.

As the name suggests, Aviation Week is an annual week-long eventful celebration of the aerospace industry full of special seminars with notable guests from the industry, fun aviation themed games such as Pull-A-Plane, and networking events so that every student here on campus could feel closer to the industry than they were the previous day.

For this year’s aviation week we had a plethora of different seminars and events. Starting on Monday, April 10, we had the CEO of Airbus Americas,

Jeff Knittel, to talk about the industry and where Airbus, along with the rest of the aerospace industry, is heading as technology changes with time.

On Tuesday, there was the Chalk Airplane Contest. In this contest, different students here at Riddle showed off their artistic skills as they drew all sorts of airplanes and aviation themed drawings on Legacy Walk using chalk. That day, we also had Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Dr. Jeff Phillips talk about how Human Factors help ensure that the aerospace industry is as magnificent as it is.

Wednesday saw the return of the fan-favorite event: Pull-A-Plane. For this year’s contest, we saw all sorts of different student groups compete against each other to see whom is the strongest on campus. Groups included

ERT, SESU, and various Greek Life organizations as they all showed off their impressive physical prowess.

Thursday saw an aviation themed trivia night to see which student here on campus isn’t just a fan of planes, but the greatest plane fanatic ERAU has. Finally on Friday, shuttles were driving students to DAB so that students could take part in the Central Florida Business Aviation Association Business Aviation Day. There, many students were able to talk with industry professionals, get their headshots done, and a few students even got to walk away with either an interview, internship or a job!

Based on all of this, it looked like this year’s Aviation Week was one for the books. With how much the industry grows every week, here’s hoping that next year’s celebration is even bigger than the last!

Embry-Riddle students and staff had the opportunity to learn about the experience of four working mothers and their experience juggling family and careers in aviation during the Aviation Week Pilot Moms Panel in the Q Hangar on April 12, 2023.