Fourth Biennial Competition Carries A $40,000 Prize

Airbus and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have signed a formal partnership supporting Airbus’ global student challenge, Fly Your Ideas.

This new agreement is another milestone in the partnership between Airbus & UNESCO, following the granting of patronage to the biennial student challenge in 2012. The partnership aims at further inspiring a new generation of engineers and innovators, while harvesting relationships between universities and industries through Fly Your Ideas. The agreement builds on the competition’s success across three previous editions.

To celebrate the agreement, Airbus has extended the registration deadline to the competition: students willing to take part in Fly Your Ideas 2015 now have until December 1st, 2014 to register online

Flavia Schlegel, Assistant Director General of Natural Sciences at UNESCO explained: "The empowerement of young generations coming from all backgrounds and all around the world, is key to develop innovative solutions and to improve the quality of life for all. Airbus’ Fly Your Ideas Competition does an excellent job in challenging students worldwide to develop innovative ideas to respond to key challenges for aviation and thus helps strengthen UNESCO’s work in engineering education.”

Since the competition was launched in 2008 Airbus has inspired more than 11,000 students representing over 600 universities from 100 countries to get involved. Charles Champion, Executive Vice President Engineering at Airbus, Patron of Fly Your Ideas and co-signatory of the UNESCO partnership says, “Fly Your Ideas reflects the reality of how we work within this exciting global industry, with students from all disciplines and backgrounds innovating and working together in international, multidisciplinary teams. With Fly Your Ideas we want to inspire young people worldwide to seize the opportunity to make a difference with their ideas, and this partnership with UNESCO gives us an even greater chance to do just that.”

Now in its fourth edition, Fly Your Ideas invites students worldwide to innovate for the future of aviation. Over a series of progressively challenging rounds, teams work with Airbus mentors and experts towards the live final in June 2015. Participants will have the chance to work with Airbus innovators to develop their ideas further throughout the competition. The winning team will receive €30,000 (approx. $40,000).

FMI: www.airbus-fyi.com