ESA 343

AIRCRAFT AERODYNAMICS
REPORT: INDUSTRIAL VISIT
Student: Purawin Subramaniam(125211)
Lecturer: Dr Noorfazreena Mohammad Kamaruddin

Figure 1: (Left) The lobby of Spirit Aerosystem.

(Right) The view of the Sepang Aircraft Engineering hangar from outside.
A class of 30 students accompanied by 1 lecturer(Dr Lee Chih Fang) visited two aviation based
companies namely Spirit Aerosystem and Sepang Aircraft Engineering(SAE) on 24th November 2016.
Special thanks to Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang for accommodating all the 30 students for a
night before the visit. Spirit Aerosystem was visited in the morning while Sepang Aircraft
Engineering(SAE) in the afternoon.
Spirit Aerosystem headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, U.S.A, based in Subang, Selangor which focuses
manufacturing parts of aircrafts like Airbus A320 NEO, Airbus A350 and Boeing 787. The main parts
that they manufacture is the Root End Fixed Fairing(REFF), Fairings, Fixed Fuselage and Trailing Edge.
According to the engineers, the composite materials to produce the parts are manufactured in
CTRM, Melaka. Therefore, Spirit Aerosystem doesnt focus on producing composite materials. A
company with 600 employees, every work is done with so precise. The tolerance value is up to the
microns, so that the parts are tightly joined. Spirit Aerosystem has painting hall, where the all the
parts are painted before exporting. We were strictly warned not to take any photos in the
manufacturing area, therefore, I cant produce any photos related to the manufacturing of the parts.
Sepang Aircraft Engineering(SAE) based in Sepang, Selangor focuses on Maintenance, Repair and
Overhaul(MRO) the aircrafts. They do have a closed hangar for repainting the aircrafts. And the
technicians did also said that they have a list of schedule for the aircrafts and the airliners could pick
what repairs and maintenance to be done on their aircrafts. During the visit, we saw Airasia Airbus
A320 and MasWing ATR aircrafts in the hangar in the process for maintenance.
I as the Director of this industrial visit would like to thank my entire team for their effort on making
this trip come true. We had to face many challenges before organising this visit. Thank you Dr Lee
Chih Fang for guiding throughout the process of the visit. I wish my juniors would get the chance of
visiting these companies in the future.

November 27, 2016