Insightful Bombardier Singapore Industry Tour for SUTD
Community-youth, Company-visits, Youth
Insightful Bombardier Singapore Industry Tour for SUTD
27 Jun 2023
Written by: Jarell Lim, SUTD EPD Year 2
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The lobby had a very strong smell of lavender, and the Bombardier logo was hanged up high. Right at the reception there’s a Saudi Arabia flag hoisted along with the Singapore flag, propped up similarly at their building entrance outside. When questioned by a student whether Bombardier had any affiliation with Saudi Arabia, Mr Winston remarked casually, “Oh that? We just have Saudi Arabian clients coming in tomorrow, so we decided to hoist their flags.” It’s a strong mark of how Bombardier views it’s clients, of high importance and deserving of the best MRO services in the industry.
Bombardier Singapore had invited SUTD Aviation Interest Group (AIG) and Aviation Studies Institute (ASI) down to their campus on 5th April at 10 Seletar Road. Mr Winston Hoo, Director of Operations at Bombardier, started of the tour with a presentation of the career progression as an aerospace engineer within the company, before bringing us around campus to view their operational facilities. Boasting 3 hangars in their campus, Bombardier gave us a glimpse of their maintenance floors which was filled end to end with many of Bombardier’s Challenger, Learjet and Global private jets from multiple clients and airlines.
I recall that many students were quite surprised at the scale of operations within the maintenance floors since it was the first time that we ever stepped into an aircraft hangar for most on the tour. SUTD does not have an aviation pillar or engineering track for students to engage in. So compared to other universities and polytechnics which may boast wind tunnels and aircraft hangars, we don’t get a lot of opportunities to learn about aviation or aerospace engineering, and even lesser interactions with industry professionals.
Before we ended off the tour, we explored the upper levels where clients got to rest and wait on the servicing of their planes, where you can have a top view of the hangar as well as Seletar runway on the other end of the lounges. A comforting area to end off the tour indeed.
Overall, it was one of the first few events that ASI and AIG have organised for SUTD students, and the reception from both students and staff was positive. They were able to learn about MRO operations, career opportunities/progression and interact with aviation professionals through this Bombardier industry tour.