”The long-term partnership between the University Politehnica of Bucharest and GKN Fokker Engineering Romania is of the utmost value to our company. Not only do we feel a moral obligation to invest in our local community, we believe that a close and good collaboration between the business community and academic institutions will improve our competitive advantage. In order to attract and maintain highly skilled and qualified personnel we want to invest and share our knowledge and experience with the university and its future talent. The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at UPB is one of the best in its field and we are proud and honored to be able to contribute to this.
This truly is a win-win”.
Tom Leene
Director GKN Fokker Engineering Romania
Bucharest, February 2019
EUROCONTROL through its Maastricht Upper Aerea Control (MUAC) center controls approximately 1.87 mil. flights per year. There, 303 air traffic controllers and 138 engineers work together, illustrating the growth of the importance of engineers in the future air traffic control systems. We are pleased that Romanian engineers, educated at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering add their contribution to this leading edge field. Even our intern students who are sent out to EUROCONTROL have remarkable results. For instance, in 2017, the 3rd Year merit scholarship Air Navigation student, George Cristian Simion, was an intern for 3 months at MUAC, creating a tool for air traffic management, which was highly regarded by experts there. Eng. Peter HENDRICKX, Director ATS ENGINEERING / ATM Systems expressed congratulations to UPB-FAE, mentioning that ”We will remember him for long, as I anticipate that his tool will be used daily by our system experts for long…. For us, he graduates his internship “Cum Laude”. Thanks once again to give us your excellent Students.” Among our students who were interns at Maastricht in the past, we mention Eng. Georgiana Ursachi, MAEng (ROMATSA), Eng. PhD student Barna Istvan Jakab, MAEng (Premium Aerotech), Eng. Andrei Mihai Dobre MAEng, (Blue Air), Eng. Bogdan Burtescu, MAEng (JLG), Eng. Monica Popa (contractor at EUROCONTROL MUAC), Eng. Bogdan Danciu (top of the class UPB-FAE 2017, master student at ETH Zürich), Eng. Radu Alexa. All of them contributed to this outstanding impression, which the Romanian aerospace engineering school made on EUROCONTROL, and consequently leading to signing a historic agreement with the University Politehnica of Bucharest, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. It is an international recognition of the performance of our school, given by one of the most respected organizations in world aviation.
”I owe a great deal of my professional success and my accomplishments in my career to the exceptional academic training, to the professionalism and dedication of the professors of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, where I studied.
What made this faculty special (and still does) is not only the academic program which is delivered, but also the ambiance, the quality and the exigence of the teaching staff, and last but not least, the fascination for the field.
The high success level in the professional career of the graduates of the Aeronautical Engineering Faculty is the result of the high standards of education and aviation delivered by this faculty. The graduates propagated its name and raised its recognition worldwide, in various aviation related field, but even beyond aviation. Everywhere professionalism, academic education quality, creativity spirit and dedication are required for success, we find these graduates: from Airbus, Boeing or Bombardier to IAvB, COMOTI, INCAS or Aerostar, from Microsoft, Alcatel or Thales to ADACEL or Indra, from ICAO, Eurocontrol, ESA, EASA or Romanian CAA, to ROMATSA, TAROM or BlueAir, to name just a few of the institutions or companies which benefit from their expertise and education background.
To paraphrase the famous words of the President of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy (12 September 1962, Rice Stadium, Houston, Texas – “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win”) we choose to stake the courses of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because we are prepared to assume the challenge of a difficult race and determined to dedicate all the required energies and efforts to win it. I am proud to be numbered among the graduates of this faculty.”
Eng. George Firican
Deputy General Director of the International Civil Aviation Organization – Region Europe and North Atlantic (ICAO-EUR/NAT)
Paris, March 2017
“For me it’s a huge pleasure to be here. Staying in Eurocontrol for many years I interacted with people from all sorts and from different countries and one thing stood out from all of us – the standard of aviation training in Romania. The individuals, the professionals that were coming to Eurocontrol from Romania stood out among other nations because they were so well prepared through the training courses they’ve been followed here in this university and I wanted to come here for all of that time [12 years] to pay tribute and acknowledgement to the academic start here and for their hard work.”
Eng. Peter Stastny
Director, ATM Safety Consultants
Ex-Director Safety EUROCONTROL and ATM Expert with the Imperial College of London
(from the presentation at the first Air Navigation Convention 2010)
”I have to say that I’ve been very fortunate in my career. I met many interesting people, first at the university- I am very grateful and proud of my teachers. I can not express in words my gratitude, because me and many colleagues of mine, which work in Eurocontrol, we are graduates of this faculty, and this is the result of our teachers. I thank them and I’m grateful for how tough they’ve been when we went through this university. Cherish them and respect them, because they’ll open your minds and they will lead your careers in the future. I never dared in my life in all the five years of university to come after my teacher in the classroom. Be smart learn, try to overpass them, but in the same time be humble and try to study as much as you can to prove that you are wearing the name of an alumni of the Aerospace Engineering Faculty. I came at this faculty because my brother studied here.Today, he’s responsible for the Airbus A380 engines and he is enjoying very much his job. I’m part of the 1992 promotion of the Avionics Section. When I finished I met Dan Andrei, one of my ‘second fathers’ and I started in The Romanian Civil Aviation Authority. Then I moved on, joining ROMATSA – there were fascinating times and I think there is a lot of room for great work here, in Romania. After some years, I joined Eurocontrol. We are about 2000 people spread in several locations; I work in Brussels, Belgium where we have a center for Management Unit, that tries to fix the delays in Europe, and a center of Charge Office. We have a research center near Paris, a school in Luxemburg, another Area Control Center in Netherlands, in Maastricht, the most busy area center in Europe, and there one of the best friends that I have and a great graduate of this university – I have a great respect and recognition for this gentleman, Razvan Margauan, he is a senior program manager (The Romanians are doing well wherever they go). Unfortunately, he can’t be here, and he passes regards to the teachers and the students. ICAO, together with the International Association of Transporters, they have the initiative called Next Generation Profession. Aviation will require more than 200,000 new pilots by 2018 and more than 350,000 pilots by 2026. When you will graduate, you will remember only the best things that your teacher had seeded in you. They will equip you with what you have to succeed.”
Eng. Antonio LICU
Head of Aeronautical Safety Unit EUROCONTROL
(from the presentation at the first Air Navigation Convention 2010)
“I graduated in 2001 in Avionics division of this faculty, and Mr. Octavian Pleter was my mentor. That moment was not a key point for the Romanian Aviation Industry but I was hired at the Ministry of Transportation, so I’ve seen for 7 months how this institution is working at the level of aviation. Then I had the luck to encounter another mentor, Mr. Dan Andrei, who took me at the Romanian Civil Aviation Authority and I worked there for 4 years as an Aeronautical Inspector. In 2004 I had the great chance to spend one year in Maastricht Upper Area Control, where I met many people who work in Eurocontrol. When I came back, I was the Quality Manager of Blue Air for one year, when they have started. After that, I returned at the Romanian Civil Aviation Authority. Starting with 2006 I worked for Tarom in various positions, starting as Chief Inspector Flight Safety and now I’m the Safety and Quality Manager. It has been an extraordinary opportunity in 9 years to work in so many different fields of the Civil Aviation, this helped me a lot. It is a great challenge to transfer from the regulatory world to the operational one, you see that everything is not ‘black’ or ‘white’, sometimes you see the ‘grey’ areas, in this way you can observe how this industry works, which are the good things and which are the bad things. In the faculty I was also involved in Euroavia, I was president of this organization for 3 years and this helped me a lot to know more about the Civil Aviation in Romania and also abroad. I chose aerospace engineering from passion. This is an international industry, and we fit very well in it. Romanians who graduate in this domain can go anywhere and work in any field. You can have success also in Romania. This faculty can ‘put on the market very good products’. Go to all the classes, don’t question yourselves why you learn different subjects, this will help you a lot in your future job. When you’ll graduate, the market will be up- the next decade will be very important on the environment filed. There is also a future in the Air Transport Industry.”
Eng. Dragoș MUNTEANU
Ex-Manager of the Safety and Quality Department of TAROM
Expert with IATA (International Air Transport Association)
(from the presentation at the first Air Navigation Convention 2010)
”At Polytechnicians, the most respected, the elite, were the electronics students, automation ones and those from Aircraft, those faculties where most went from passion, and not just for a degree. The admission was the hardest, and the study was very demanding.”
(George Butunoiu, ”Faculties in the communist era (in Romanian)”, Blog 24 Aug 2015)