Prep R Take Off at Manchester Airport!

Prep R set off to Manchester Airport to learn all about planes and roles in the aviation industry. On arrival we were welcomed by our Runway Park guide who showed us inside the cabin of an old Monarch DC 10 plane which served as a classroom. In here we learnt about the many different people who work at the airport and what each of their job entails. The children enjoyed dressing up as cabin crew, pilots, captains and officers as well as firefighters, police and air traffic control.

We were lucky enough to experience what it is like for pilots and flight engineers in the cockpit and we had a lot of fun pushing buttons and turning dials and pretending we were flying off to exotic places! We also learnt about the bird scarers who work at the airport and what an important role they play in keeping birds from disrupting the flights. We listened to the bird scare Tannoy which was very loud and very funny!

After our classroom session we had an exciting visit to the Concorde Hangar to learn all about the fastest passenger plane ever built. We listened to the guide telling us about how it was twice as fast as sound, and we learnt the word ‘supersonic’. We also learnt how the wings were shaped differently to other planes. The wings of Concorde are called ‘Delta’ and these help Concorde to fly very very fast.

We also found out that, when in the air, the body of the plane gets fiercely hot and because of this it expands so much that it makes an area in the cockpit accessible for the Pilot to keep his cap! Of course, by the time Concorde landed, the plane had cooled considerably, and had retracted back to its original size. Concorde is painted with a special extendable paint so it can expand in flight! We went on to compare the pointy nose of Concorde with a smaller plane which was commissioned as a prototype for the late Queen’s plane.

We learnt that this plane was never actually put into use and is now used to teach people all about the different parts of planes and how they work. As always, lunch did not disappoint and although the sun wasn’t shining we managed to watch the aeroplanes take off and land and were excited to watch the huge Emirates plane land which is currently the biggest plane in the world!

All in all we had a super day which has enriched our learning in many ways; we have some budding pilots in Prep R!

We couldn’t wait to get back to school to put into practice what we had learnt, in our very own aeroplane role play plane ‘West Air’.rport!