The Swansea teams beat off competition from 7 other student teams to soar to victory at the competition held at Coventry University. The competition challenges the student teams to design and “build” their aircraft in a flight simulator.  All teams also gave a presentation demonstrating how and why they picked their design and how they used the simulator to aid their development. This part of the competition was also won by one of the Swansea teams.

The two Swansea College of Engineering teams are Master of Engineering or Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering students and were headed up by Matthew Kear and Lauren Griffiths.  Matthews’s team won first prize in both categories while Lauren’s team came overall runners up.

Matthew said: “"We are all thrilled to have come first.  It has been a lot of hard work that has culminated in a great result."

The winners received £800 and a year’s membership to the Royal Aerospace Engineering Society and also received £250 for their winning presentation.

Professor Hans Sienz, of the College of Engineering, who also supervised both teams said: “Congratulations to both teams. This is an outstanding success and is a clean sweep from Swansea! When combining this with Swansea’s aerospace engineering students having been the only team to hold the UK and the US title in this competition at the same time, it continues a strong tradition of world class aerospace education at Swansea.

"The group design in the final year of the Masters courses is the culmination of 4 years of hard work for our students. During it, the students are challenged throughout the year on their design choices and progress by a panel consisting of academics and researchers, by our flight simulator technician Jane Wallace and an expert from BAE Systems."

IT FLIES UK 2013 winners. (L-R) Maxwell Howitt, Jordan Peake, Matthew Kear, Siu Chung Perry Chu and David Barden