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Desarae Craig currently works at KF Aerospace as a structures technician, but before that, she was an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer – Structures (AME-S) student at Okanagan College.
Since graduating in October 2020, her work at KF has included converting old passenger planes into cargo planes.
“Everything we learn in school applies in some way or form in your working life, because they’re all relevant,” Craig says.
The Aero Skills Tournament is a US and Canada-based aircraft skills competition, developed by Aircraft Technologies Group (ATG).
The competition features solo and team events, where participants show off their skills through various tasks including drilling, riveting and assembling structures. It showcases to the audience how the work is done, and how well the participants do their tasks under pressure.
“Desarae competed with the other juniors. She took a little longer than the others. She took her time to work on her quality, but it paid off in the end,” says Jay Logie founder of ATG.
He says Craig won the tournament because of the quality of her work and the time she took to do it, which is how the winner is determined.
“We’ve found that people who go through Okanagan College learn their skills well and it’s always evident when they compete in Aero Skills,” he says.
“I would really like to see girls get into this,” she says.
“It’s a fun, fast-paced industry and there are new tasks every day and you’re always learning. I hope my presence and win inspire someone to get into this industry too.”
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