Struggle for skilled workers in spotlight at Farnborough Airshow

Germany's Lilium Jet has a queue of young engineers and students waiting to board thanks to the interest of a five-year-old boy. The futuristic flying taxi is one of many high-tech projects on display as the Farnborough Airshow turns its attention to the aerospace industry's urgent recruitment problem. "We weren't intending to open up the cabin today but a five-year-old boy came along and said 'this takes off vertically and why can't I get on board' and since then we have had a queue of visitors," said talent acquisition head Alex Jordan. For the young boy, a job in aviation remains a distant dream, but the industry is hungry for skilled recruits to meet demand. "Aerospace is always the high frontier... you see things flying and you want to work for them," said Jeet Makadia, 27, a recent engineering graduate working on a project at Rolls-Royce. Visitors to the exhibition which ended on Friday will not immediately solve aerospace's problem in replacing workers lost during the pandemic. But the threat from labour shortages to current production and future growth plans casts a long shadow over the show. "There are very few people studying aerospace so there is a people shortage" said Tushar Subhash Dhulasawant, 26, a recently graduated engineer interested in control systems and UAV design. Aerospace's pitch to potential recruits includes visionary ambitions like space projects that few other industries can match. But aerospace giants like Boeing and Airbus face competition from nimble sectors like artificial intelligence that deploy many of the same engineering skills.<br/>