Technicians from AirAsia have held an initial meeting with Formula 1 racing team AT&T Williams to explore potential aerospace-related synergies between the two companies' engineering departments.
The September meeting comes as part of the Asian low-cost carrier's three-year sponsorship deal with AT&T Willliams, which began at the start of the 2007 Formula 1 season.
The first meeting was attended by AirAsia engineers from Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. The chosen engineers, including representatives from AirAsia's Academy, which trains Malaysian graduates from across many engineering disciplines, spent time at Williams' UK factory in Grove near Oxford with the team's engineers and technicians.
Also present was a group of engineering students from select British universities who were invited by the airline to join the programme.
Areas such as component-tracking and suppliers were discussed as AirAsia looks to embrace some of Formula 1's advanced technologies and share information across the aerospace and racing-car building industries.
"It was great to meet the guys from AirAsia in what was a very informative day for us both," says Williams test engineer Tom McCullough. "I look forward to continuing our programme of cross-learning schemes with AirAsia over the next few years."
According to Motorsport Development UK - the public-private partnership tasked with developing the UK motorsport sector - there are several links between F1 teams and the aviation industry.
Williams is working with Airbus and Rolls-Royce to develop next generation computational fluid dynamics technology, while McLaren-Mercedes and BAE Systems have a technical partnership.
Meanwhile, Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya - boss of Indian carrier Kingfisher - has become joint owner of Formula 1 team Spyker. Mallya is a partner in the team's new owner Orange India Holdings with Dutch businessman Michiel Mol.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
