It was September 18, 2012 when Dadid Satriyo Putro (Industrial Engineering, batch 2008) decided to invite Andika Rinaldo Asry (Industrial Engineering, batch 2008) and Estria Asi Putri (Industrial Engineering, batch 2008), forming a team for the Airbus Fly Your Ideas 2013 Competition. As a biennial sustainable development competition of this biggest European aircraft manufacturer, Airbus really takes the students to involve in while keeping it up with their university’s mentors to show the spirit of competition. Budi Hartono, ST., MPM., Ph.D was then assigned as the ‘Travelers in Disguise’ team mentor, along with Rusyda Afina (Accounting, batch 2009) and M. Gustri Oktaviandi (Accounting, 2009); who is now replaced by M. Irka Irfa D. (Accounting, batch 2009); to join the team. There are six key challenges for aviation in the 21st century which the students had to propose their ideas on: energy, efficiency, affordable growth, traffic growth, passenger experience and community friendliness. Coming up with their project title: “Enhancing Airbus’ Image and New Market by Minimizing the Dependency of Disabled Passengers Through New Wheel-Chairs Technology Advancement”, the team has been concerning the handicapped passengers to experience the joy of flying with aircrafts.
There were at least 6,089 students from all around the world registered on the competition. While 618 teams (2,556 students with 82 different nationalities) submitted their idea on the first round. This idea has brought them as one of the world’s top 102 teams on the second round of the competition on January 15, 2013, making the team as the only two Indonesian teams; another one is from UGM as well;
representing the nation on this second round of competition. The team is now still competing with the other 101 teams from around the world towards becoming one of the five finalist teams to fly to Hamburg, Germany to have the final presentation on June 12, 2013 and the closing ceremony at the UNESCO Center in Paris, France on the next day. The team needs to work on written report of their idea development and implementation planning, team video project profile and photographs, and the Team-Line attractiveness for the media approach. Travelers in Disguise team’s Team-Line profile can be seen on www.airbus-fyi.com/teams/458. The team with the most attractive Team-Line media approach and the best team video project profile will receive special prizes. Moreover, the 5 finalist teams will find what it takes to be the world’s champion to get the € 30,000, while the runner up will enjoy € 15,000. “We are really enjoying this competition, and our idea got mostly positive feedbacks from the judge panel. This is the time for Indonesian team to win this competition.”, said Andika, the team’s leader.