The New Year saw the opening of our Cranfield office located in the Innovation Centre on the Cranfield University Technology Park. We bring our operational airport intelligence to support sustainable aviation initiatives, lecturers, and students on the University campus.
Over the past 10 years, we have enjoyed strong links with Cranfield University, sharing operational expertise with students, and recruiting the most talented individuals for our business. As a university that provides high-quality master’s degree qualifications including the Airport Planning and Management course, it’s an excellent fit for AiQ who deliver intelligent airport solutions. This relationship is important to us as our people are the heart of our business – the iQ to airports.
Cranfield University Alumni at AiQ
Over the years we have been fortunate to welcome six Cranfield Alumni students to AiQ with the knowledge and passion to deliver innovative kerbside to airspace solutions as part of our team.
One of these alumni students is Nomaan Asghar, our experienced senior airport planner. He studied MSc in Airport Planning and Management at Cranfield, deepening his knowledge following successful completion of BSc Aviation Management at London Metropolitan. With over 16 years in the airport industry and AiQ’s longest-serving employee, he has been instrumental in the success of AiQ. Nomaan has solved complex operational challenges to our worldwide airport clients including Heathrow, Budapest, Bristol, Hyderabad, and a Far East International airport. He was the lead management consultant working in close partnership with NATS on the Bristol Airport End to End Capacity assessment from kerbside to airspace, winning AiQ the AoA Best Solution Provider 2019. During the height of the COVID pandemic, Nomaan worked in collaboration with IATA to determine the Level of Service (LoS) for a Far East International airport. Impressively this challenging project was completed from the UK due to travel restrictions.
Mevin Varghese, our talented senior airport planner is also an Airport Planning and Management alumni from Cranfield University following his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the National Institute of Technology Calicut, India. Mevin first met AiQ during his MSc group project presentation, where AiQ was on the industry expert panel. Six years later and he’s leading a variety of airport projects worldwide including Heathrow, Leeds Bradford, Gatwick, Farnborough, and Saudi Arabia, bringing his design and extensive operational knowledge. Mevin’s consultancy and business development skills have developed to a level where he is initiating his own projects through building relationships with key decision-makers.
Highly recommended by the Cranfield lecturers, Anushka Padhye joined AiQ four years ago after undertaking an internship with us, studying Disruptive Technologies on GSE operations. Anushka graduated from Cranfield University having studied MSc Management with a passion for the aviation industry. Her keen interest in aviation originated from within her family, both her father and brother are pilots and her grandfathers were Air India engineers. After two years of intensive training, working on a range of airport projects, Anushka’s become a very capable airport planner and now successfully manages her own projects at Heathrow and Gatwick Airports.
The most recent recruit from Cranfield University is Anirudh Kampli, who we welcomed last year as a dedicated eVTOL Research Intern for 3 months to assist further with our eVTOL research. Both Mevin and Anushka both supported Anirudh with his research. Read more about his internship with us here.
Mentoring and development of our people
Airports are highly complex, taking years to fully understand the operational aspects. Our team have security passes at Heathrow Airport allowing them to work on landside and airside projects and continuously learn. Highly capable and experienced people are at the heart of our business, so the development of our people is of great importance. The range of hands-on experience and mentoring that new team members gain is vast, covering all processes from passengers, baggage, GSE, Security, Apron, Cargo and Transfer systems. The team are flexible and interchangeable, developing their careers very rapidly with mentoring from our senior directors. Uniquely, our team are trained in all techniques of consultancy including stakeholder management, account management, commercial management, and business development. These skills would only be gained in a small agile airport consultancy such as AiQ.
How we support Cranfield University Students
We take great pride in sharing our operational airport knowledge to enrich students learning at Cranfield University. Our engagements with the MSc Airport Planning and Management course have ranged from being on the industry expert panel for the group presentations, answering operational questions, exhibiting at the career fair, and offering internship programmes to support dissertation research. When we recruit, Cranfield University is one of our first places to seek the most talented individuals.
Are you a student looking to progress your career in a successful, dynamic airport consultancy?
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The future at Cranfield
We look forward to developing our trusted links with course lecturers and exploring how we can further engage and share our expertise with the students.
Are you a lecturer new to AiQ and wish to find out more about us?
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