Life just gets jetter
Sarah services holiday aircraft
IT’S plane to see 22-year-old Sarah Timperon loves her job. Her career is well on the wing – and she likes nothing better than to help other people take off on holiday.
Sarah reckons she has the best job in the world as an aeronautical engineering apprentice with travel giant Thomas Cook.
And she’s even flown off on her jollies on a plane she’s helped fix...
What’s a typical day like for you?
I usually start at 6.30am and get myself in overalls to work in the Thomas Cook hangar at Manchester Airport. I get a buzz every time I walk in and see an aircraft parked up for its regular service.
As a third-year apprentice, I still spend one day a week at college but the rest of the time I’m working on the aircraft. I mostly work on 757s doing the same as you would to cars when they go in for a service – maybe not quite an oil change and new windscreen wipers but you get the idea.
I prefer working on the electrical side of things such as servicing the in-flight entertainment system or the lighting. I love knowing every bit of what I do makes a flight that much safer and more enjoyable for customers.
It’s also great to know the planes I am working on fly all over the world.
It is a blokey work environment?
I suppose I am in the minority as a girl, but it has no impact whatsoever on how I am treated. Women engineers are becoming much more commonplace to the point it is irrelevant. There’s always room for more girls though.
Have you travelled on any of your planes?
When I went on holiday to Tenerife last September I flew on one of the 757s I had been working on. It was fantastic being a passenger knowing my work was all around me.
I had helped fit the LED lights as part of a cabin lighting upgrade. The lights looked really smart which was very satisfying.
I expect in future I will be travelling on a lot more planes which I’ve helped service as we get very handy travel concessions.
What got you obsessed with aircraft?
When I Ieft school I got a job locally in Weymouth making electrical harnesses for helicopters. It was much more about interpreting drawings and soldering connectors than my current job, but it was there I realised I was fascinated with aircraft.
I set about finding myself an apprenticeship which would allow me to learn as much as possible about how things fly. I found the Thomas Cook apprenticeship and haven’t looked back. I didn’t want to go to university, but the fact that the first year of my apprenticeship was at college meant I was getting the best of all worlds, learning and earning.
JET OFF WITH A TRAVEL JOB
The industry employs about 750,000 people and is worth millions to the UK economy. We’ve bagged 28,992 jobs across the world of travel and transport.
Thomas Cook has 316 vacancies (careers.thomascook.com) which include 10 sales apprentices and 15 engineer apprentices. The closing date is June 17 so get your application in quickly. TUI (which includes First Choice and Crystal Ski) has more than 270 vacancies including apprenticeships and cabin crew (tuijobsuk.co.uk).
At fish4jobs.co.uk, we found 2,013 travel jobs and 1,322 transport roles. These range from a travel sales advisor in Chester (£17,000) and airside cleaning and security at Stansted Airport (£8.07 per hour), to a travel consultant at Tunbridge Wells (up to £35,000) and an operations manager in Nottingham (£24,000 to £27,000).
At gov.uk/jobsearch we spotted a further 19,877 transport and travel positions. These include a travel co-ordinator in Edenbridge, Kent (£23,000 to £28,000), an apprentice business travel consultant in Stafford (£196 per week), an experienced travel clerk in Perth (£12,000 to £15,000), non-experienced cabin crew at Stansted (£17,850) and an export gateway clerk in East London (up to £13.70 per hour).
For jobs in the airline industry, check out aviationjobsearch.com which lists 3,452 vacancies ranging from 557 pilot jobs to 881 engineers. At travelweekly. co.uk there are 671 jobs in travel while seasonworkers.com has 504 jobs.
Networkrail.co.uk have 159 jobs while getingofar.gov.uk, the National Apprenticeship Service, have 408 opportunities in travel and tourism.
I went to Tenerife on a 757 that I’d worked on