About Aviation Generation
Aviation Generation brings industry and education together to create a shared, coordinated set of accessible pathways for developing future aviation professionals.
From our Founder
ENGAP UK CIC was established in 2020 with an ambition to do more than develop a new educational idea or demonstrate that a model could work. Aviation Generation® is a registered trademark and trading name.
Our purpose is to create pathways that lead learners to the door of aviation with the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed for their chosen roles.
Through Barnet & Southgate College and Stockton Sixth Form College, that purpose is now delivering visible community benefit.
Young people are choosing aviation pathways. Colleges are adapting their provision around them. Employers are contributing directly to their education. Progression routes are becoming clearer, and aviation is beginning to feel less remote and more achievable to learners who may previously have struggled to see where they belonged.
We are also beginning to build a wider aviation ecosystem around those learners - bringing together education, industry, heritage, specialist training and progression rather than offering them as separate experiences.
This makes our commitment to collaboration before competition visible in practice.
Our Community-Benefit Commitments
ENGAP UK CIC was established with five community-benefit objects:
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To widen access to aviation and air-and-space opportunities through collaboration with communities, education, industry and other organisations.
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To inform, advise and educate people about aviation, while promoting social inclusion, belonging and accessibility.
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To translate the skills needs of aviation employers into clear information, advice and guidance for learners and their communities.
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To create educationally integrated pathways into the industry and help overcome barriers to education, training and employment.
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To celebrate positive aviation achievement, heritage and role models capable of inspiring the next generation.
Barnet & Southgate and Stockton are now making those commitments tangible in real places, for real learners and their families.
Impact in Place
Barnet & Southgate College
Barnet & Southgate has a particular resonance. Its aviation provision is developing within a part of north London shaped by an extraordinary aviation inheritance: Hendon, Stag Lane, de Havilland, Amy Johnson and generations of pilots, engineers, manufacturers and innovators.
This is not simply a historical connection.
Our developing partnership with the RAF Museum at Hendon creates an opportunity to turn that heritage into a living educational resource. It can support Aviation Operations and Aviation Engineering through exposure to engineering, conservation, safety, operational practice, employability and the changing future of aviation.
Our partnership with the University of Hertfordshire creates a further connection through its de Havilland Campus at Hatfield, linking aviation heritage with higher education, engineering and future progression.
Amy Johnson captures something important within that story. She was both a pioneering pilot and a qualified ground engineer - an example of aspiration combined with technical competence, determination and access.
Our developing relationship with EmPower Flight and Crew adds another practical dimension, connecting learners with specialist aviation regulatory training and industry-facing experience.
Together, these relationships demonstrate that Aviation Generation is not simply placing a course within a college. It is building an aviation ecosystem around the learner.
The significance of this heritage is not nostalgia. It is a community asset. It can help young people understand that aviation did not simply happen somewhere else. It grew from places they recognise, through local engineers, manufacturers, pilots, educators and innovators—and they can have an equally legitimate place in its future.
Barnet is becoming a place where aviation’s heritage, present-day industry and future talent can meet.
Stockton Sixth Form College
Stockton represents the same community purpose through a different but equally important story.
Its strong learner demand demonstrates that aspiration and talent are not confined to communities surrounding major airports. Young people across the country should not have to inherit an aviation network, family connection or geographic advantage before they can imagine themselves belonging in the industry.
Barnet & Southgate and Stockton are therefore more than delivery centres. They are the first substantial evidence that our CIC purpose can be converted into sustained community impact: widening opportunity, connecting education with industry, strengthening aspiration and creating routes into professions that may previously have appeared inaccessible.
Advisory Board Stewardship
Our Advisory Board is an important part of this work.
Its role is not simply to help Aviation Generation grow. It is to help us ensure that, as we develop, our quality, governance, investment, education partnerships, employer engagement and future development remain faithful to our five community-benefit commitments.
Together with our Advisory Board of global aviation leaders, we are working towards a more connected aviation talent system - one in which education and industry move in step, giving every learner the chance to enter aviation equipped, inspired and ready to contribute.
Simon Witts
Founder & Origineer
