BRYANT — Aerospace and engineering students at Bryant High School received a different and interesting gift on Friday, and students are getting used to it being in their work area.
The gift was an elevator section of the tail of an A330 medium-sized airliner, compliments of Airbus, an aircraft manufacturer based in Blagnac, France, with manufacturing plants in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.
“We are all thrilled to get the piece,” said John Williams, the teacher who leads the aerospace and engineering program at Bryant High School, known as Hornet Engineering and Technology, or HEAT. “This is the first time Airbus has given a donation like this to a high school technology program. These things usually go to university aerospace programs.”
While the elevator surface is only a small piece of a medium jetliner, it demonstrates the true size of the aircraft. The piece is 28 feet long, with one end 6 feet wide; then it tapers to just about 3 feet at the other end. It is actually a small, although very important, piece of the aircraft’s horizontal stabilizers, the two winglike pieces at the tail of an aircraft on each side of the rudder and vertical stabilizer. The elevator Bryant students will study is the one from the left side of the plane.
Williams said the donation from the airline manufacturer came about because he ran across on old friend who works for Airbus.
“He was from my home town of Arley, Alabama, and we touched base, and I told him what I was doing and what kind of students I taught,” Williams said. “He told me about the program the company had about providing materials for classes, but they had never made a donation to a high school before.”
So, inquiries were made by the airline manufacturer, with officials exploring the HEAT website and Williams asking about what might be made available to his students. The answer was the elevator section of an A330.
“They said it could not be repaired, and we could have it,” Williams said.
The elevator, looking much like the wing of a smaller plane, arrived at Bryant High School during a morning assembly for this year’s homecoming. The students found the crate when they went back to the technology building.
While the plane part is big, being made from composite materials, once it was unpacked the members of the class carried it into the tech building.
It has no moving parts, but that does not limit its use for the aerospace class.
“It’s made from a composite material with carbon fiber, so we can do some experiments and study the material that is used,” Williams said. “My degree is in fiber engineering, so it fits. Then we will just see what else we can come up with to use it.”
Williams said the students have talked of hanging the long winglike elevator from the classroom’s ceiling. It would be a sample of their studies and a reminder that what they are learning has real-world applications.
The Bryant aerospace class is in its second year and is designed for students in grades 10-12.
“So far this year, they have been studying the history of aviation, the mechanics of flight and aircraft control,” Williams said. “We hope to order a flight simulator next week. It will be a firewall (much like an auto dashboard) with analog switches and controls for flying a Cessna airplane.”
Williams said he thinks the class will construct the simulator using the crate the elevator came in as the simulator’s base.
The highlight for the 33 members of the class will be some flight time later in the year with Central Flying Service, based at the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock.
“We went there last year,” Williams said. “The students had 30 minutes riding in the plane and 30 minutes of stick time at the controls.”
The teacher said one graduate of last year’s aerospace program is now a student in the Aviation Department at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia.
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.