A set of stu­dents enrolled at UTC, have been invest­ing time and efforts each semes­ter for the past two years in a unique project: rebuild­ing a Laté­coère 28, a French plane designed in 1929 of which no mod­el exists today. 

The Grand Palais Paris will host an exhi­bi­tion, in 2018, to com­mem­o­rate the cen­te­nary of air trans­porta­tion. A Com­pieg­ne based asso­ci­a­tion, the Cer­cle des Machines Volantes (CMV) will be asso­ci­at­ed with the event, decid­ing to rebuild a Laté­coère 28, an emblem­at­ic French air­craft that left its mark on the ear­ly days of civ­il avi­a­tion. Frédérick Collinot, Pres­i­dent of the Cer­cle, invit­ed UTC to con­tribute to the aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer­ing aspects of the project. Indeed this is not the first col­lab­o­ra­tive work between UTC and CMV – UTC stu­dents have been engaged for 4 years now, rebuild­ing a Cau­dron C430 (the project is pro­gress­ing smooth­ly but has been put on stand­by sta­tus for a while, as of 2016, the teams con­cen­trat­ing on rebuild­ing the Laté­coère, deemed more urgent). 

A project on this scale calls for rig­or­ous orga­ni­za­tion and for this rea­sons, every semes­ter, 4 to 5 stu­dents enrol for a project man­age­ment cred­it course (CC). “We liaise with Mr Picard who ini­ti­at­ed this project at UTC and the oth­er stu­dents engaged in CCs as need­ed to imple­ment the rebuild project and it is our remit to recruit the stu­dents”, explains War­ren Pasi­ni, him­self a UTC stu­dent. “We also look after the spon­sor­ship arrangements”. 

Each CC there is an assign­ment of a spe­cif­ic prob­lem that relates to the Laté­coère rebuild pro­gramme. “Note­wor­thy CCs are ‘dig­i­tal mod­el­ling’, to study the air­craft pro­file, propul­sion unit ‘engine mod­el­ling’, anoth­er for the “wood stiff­en­ers” and n for instance, this semes­ter, we have a group study­ing can­vas aero­foil skin prop­er­ties”, explains War­ren. But, pri­or to even envis­ag­ing rebuild­ing this air­craft, a huge amount of doc­u­men­tary research had to be done, notably for the tech­ni­cal, draw­ing held at the Laté­coère Foun­da­tion and also by mem­bers alive today of the Laté­coère fam­i­ly. “The stu­dents used the draw­ing as the base to begin their mod­el­ling work, and that allowed us to make pric­ing esti­mates for parts that we could not make direct­ly in the CMV work­shops”. The objec­tive of the Asso­ci­a­tion is to have all the parts need­ed made by ear­ly 2018 which then will be assem­bled in to the final air­craft struc­ture ready for the exhi­bi­tion at the Grand Palais in Paris. The air-engines and oth­er func­tion-relat­ed equip­ment will be fit­ted lat­er, open­ing the prospect of a his­toric re-enact­ment of the very first aero postal flight between Europe and South America. 

This unusu­al project attract­ed numer­ous stu­dents, lec­tur­ers and research sci­en­tists. “Those who join the project are not nec­es­sar­i­ly aero­nau­ti­cal fans when they start, but they become fans! Sev­er­al stu­dents have decid­ed to spe­cial­ize in this field and one lec­tur­er even gained his pilot‘s license”, notes War­ren enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. It is a project that is high­ly enrich­ing for the stu­dents inas­much as they have a chance to direct­ly apply their class-learned the­o­ret­i­cal skills to a con­crete case. It also requires them to dis­play a large degree of self-moti­va­tion, of orga­ni­za­tion, of com­pli­ance with deliv­ery dates and rel­e­vant dis­tri­b­u­tion of the tasks to be car­ried out. “It is also a project that calls for a large per­son­al com­mit­ment, amount­ing on aver­age to 60 hours per semes­ter. There is a huge lev­el of respon­si­bil­i­ty attached to the project, giv­en that the ulti­mate aim is that this rebuilt Laté­coère will (and must) fly”, con­cludes Warren. 

Ren­dezvous in 2018 at the Grand Palais, Paris!

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Pierre-Georges Laté­coère cre­at­ed the Société Générale des Lignes Laté­coère in 1918 (lat­er to be known as the leg­endary Aéro­postale, in 1927). WW1 had just end­ed. Mil­i­tary air­craft were being replaced by civ­il trans­port mod­els and “By Air” postal ser­vices took a giant leap for­ward. Air­craft design­ers – to car­ry air­mail and pas­sen­gers over ever increas­ing dis­tances – began propos­ing new mod­els on a reg­u­lar basis. This was indeed the case for the Laté­coère 28, designed in 1929, with a pas­sen­ger capac­i­ty of 8, in addi­tion to the air­mail load. In 1930, pilot Jean Mer­moz made the first non-stop cross­ing of the South Atlantic aboard a float equipped Laté­coère – it took him 21 hours in flight between Sene­gal and Brazil and this achieve­ment opened the way for numer­ous aero postal lines from Europe to the South Amer­i­can continent.